Opinion ID: 2683890
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Plaintiffs’ Initial Proceedings Before the

Text: Administrative Law Judge and the District Court When PVUSD denied E.M. special education benefits, Plaintiffs filed an administrative complaint with the Special Education Division of the California Office of Administrative Hearings. A hearing was held, and on May 2006, the ALJ issued a final decision denying Plaintiffs any relief. Plaintiffs then commenced this action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In October 2007, the district court denied cross-motions for summary judgment and remanded the case to the ALJ. The ALJ was asked to “set forth more completely his reasoning as to why the WISC test was favored over the K-ABC, as well as his approach to evaluating all of the quantitative test data in light of the mixed results of that data.” Meanwhile, Plaintiffs had E.M. tested by Dr. Cheryl Jacques, who estimated his IQ to be 110. PVUSD then retested E.M. for eligibility for special education and found E.M.’s IQ to be 114. This led PVUSD to determine in February 2008 that E.M. was eligible for special education benefits. Shortly thereafter, E.M. moved to the Fullerton E.M. V. PAJARO VALLEY USD 9 Joint Union High School District, which also determined that he was eligible for special education services. On remand, the ALJ again determined that Plaintiffs were not entitled to any relief. Plaintiffs appealed to the district court. On August 27, 2009, the district court granted PVUSD’s motion for summary judgment. In doing so, the court first agreed with the ALJ that Ms. Viall was credible and her reasoning persuasive.3 The court noted the irony that PVUSD relied on the diagnostic score provided by Plaintiffs, while Plaintiffs claimed that PVUSD should have used its own K- ABC scores. The district court further agreed with the ALJ that PVUSD had administered multiple tests to E.M. and had used the totality of the results to arrive at its ultimate determination of ineligibility. 3 The district court noted that Ms. Viall had stated that she felt “the WISC is a test of choice and it showed consistency with the TONI, and [I] didn’t use the full scale score because of [E.M.’s] bilingual background, so it seemed more valid to use the performance score.” The court also observed that Ms. Viall had indicated that she thought E.M.’s score on the K-ABC was inflated because it was not consistent with the WISC or TONI scores, and testified that she “no longer used the K-ABC because she had found that the test failed to provide ‘good information for looking at student’s processing.’” The court further observed that “Ms. Viall had conferred with other educators, who had confirmed the possibility of inflated K-ABC scores, and at the time of the due process hearing she believed that ‘the WISC is a much more researched and much more reliable and valid measure.’” The court discounted Dr. Wright’s testimony to a certain extent because she did not observe E.M. in the classroom, review his school records, or speak with his teachers, and Dr. Wright’s assessment “was intended to serve an entirely different purpose, namely a finding of eligibility under the ADA that would be relevant to the family’s immigration proceedings.” 10 E.M. V. PAJARO VALLEY USD The district court further noted that “viewed as a whole, the observational and anecdotal evidence describes a student who was distracted easily but who also responded to various forms of classroom intervention.” It opined that had E.M. “been able to complete assignments and homework on a more consistent basis, it seems likely that he would have been a consistently average to above-average performer.” Finally, addressing Plaintiffs’ allegation that PVUSD failed to perform assessments with respect to E.M.’s auditory processing, hearing and behavior, the district court commented that at least one auditory processing test was administered by Ms. Viall, and that PVUSD’s resource specialist “conducted the Brigance test in both Spanish and English as part of the initial assessment, and this test arguably addresses auditory processing through a subtest involving sentence repetition.”4 C. Plaintiffs’ Initial Appeal to the Ninth Circuit Plaintiffs appealed, and we issued an opinion affirming in part and reversing in part. E.M. v. Pajaro Valley Unified Sch. Dist., 652 F.3d 999 (9th Cir. 2011). We recognized that “school districts have discretion in selecting the diagnostic tests they use to determine special education eligibility.” Id. at 1003. Noting the different tests used to evaluate E.M., we 4 The district court related that “Ms. Viall testified that E.M. did not appear to suffer from auditory processing difficulties because he started tasks immediately when given oral instructions, and the WISC-III assessment had not shown a processing disorder.” She further stated that “the fact that E.M. had progressed to an A-level student in certain academic areas, as well as his improvement in standardized math skills to the basic level, are highly probative of an ability to succeed in the regular classroom environment.” E.M. V. PAJARO VALLEY USD 11 held that a school district, “considering all relevant material available on a pupil, must make a reasonable choice between valid but conflicting test results in determining whether a ‘severe discrepancy’ exists.” Id. at 1004. We did not determine whether PVUSD’s choice was reasonable because we determined that the district court had erred in excluding Dr. Jacques’s 2007 report.5 Id. at 1006. Accordingly, the district court was instructed on remand to consider whether Dr. Jacques’s report, as well as PVUSD’s 2008 assessment of E.M., were “relevant to the determination whether PVUSD met its obligations to E.M.” Id. We then held, over a dissent, that Plaintiffs had not waived their assertion that the district court should have considered whether E.M.’s auditory processing disorder qualified him for special education as a child with an “other health impairment.” Id. at 1006. We remanded the case to the district court “for a determination whether, during all relevant times, PVUSD met its affirmative obligation to locate, evaluate, and identify E.M. as a child with an other health impairment or a specific learning disability related to his auditory processing disorder.” Id at 1007. 5 We explained: The district court excluded Dr. Jacques’s report as not “necessary to evaluate the ALJ’s determination.” The proper inquiry was whether the report was relevant, non-cumulative, and otherwise admissible. 652 F.3d at 1006. 12 E.M. V. PAJARO VALLEY USD D. The District Court’s Opinion on Remand On remand, the district court read our opinion as holding that “E.M. had a ‘disorder in a basic psychological process,’ specifically, ‘an auditory processing disorder.’” However, the court found that we had not reached “the issue of whether PVUSD’s choice among test scores was reasonable; rather [we] remanded the matter for further consideration of that issue.” The district court proceeded to determine whether Plaintiffs had shown that there was a “severe discrepancy” between E.M.’s intellectual ability and his achievement. The district court noted that all agree that E.M.’s lowest academic standard score was 87. The court then reviewed the three test scores, and concluded that the ALJ’s use of the WISC’s score of 104, and the consequential finding that there was no severe discrepancy (only 17 points difference), were “thorough and careful” and entitled to deference. The court further conducted its own de novo review of the evidence in the administrative record, and concluded that Plaintiffs had not met their burden of showing that it was unreasonable for PVUSD to use the WISC test score. The district court agreed with the ALJ that the school psychologist’s testimony was more persuasive than Dr. Wright’s perspective because of her experience administrating educational assessments to children and her actual knowledge of E.M.6 The court further found that 6 The ALJ had reasoned: Leslie Viall’s testimony established that the performance score on the WISC-III of 104 is the valid measure of [E.M.’s] intellectual ability. Ms. Viall is a E.M. V. PAJARO VALLEY USD 13 neither Dr. Jacques’s report nor the PVUSD’s 2008 assessment of E.M. altered its determination that PVUSD’s 2005 assessment of E.M. was not unreasonable. Turning to the issue of whether E.M. could qualify for special education on the basis of having an “other health impairment,” the district court noted that 20 U.S.C. § 1401(3)(A)(i) listed nine defined categories such as “intellectual disabilities,” “autism,” and “specific learning disabilities,” and a tenth category described broadly as “other health impairment.” At the time of the PVUSD assessment, “other health impairment” (sometimes referred to as “OHI”) was defined as follows: Other health impairment means having limited strength, vitality or alertness to environmental stimuli, that results in limited credentialed school psychologist with more than 15 years’ experience administering educational assessments to children. She testified that the WISC is the most common intelligence quotient test administered to children, as well as the best predictor of school performance. Ms. Viall administered the K- ABC when she assessed [E.M.] in October 2004 only because the parents’ assessor, Dr. Wright, had recently administered the WISC-III. If Ms. Viall had administered the WISC-III less than four months after Dr. Wright’s administration, Ms. Viall would have obtained an invalid score. When Ms. Viall obtained a significantly higher score on the K-ABC (111), she administered another intelligence test, the [TONI,] to obtain more information. [E.M.’s] TONI score of 98 was consistent with [E.M.’s] performance score on the WISC-III, not the inflated score on the K-ABC. 14 E.M. V. PAJARO VALLEY USD alertness with respect to the educational environment, that –
such as asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, and sickle cell anemia; and
performance. 34 C.F.R. § 300.7(c)(9)). Despite Plaintiffs’ contrary assertion, the district court did not find any decisions by courts or hearing officers specifically holding that auditory processing disorders qualify as OHIs. Accordingly, the court approached the question as a matter of first impression, using canons of construction. The court determined that “specific learning disability” and “other health impairment” concerned two different categories of impairment.7 The district court, noting that the statute 7 The district court explained: In the regulations, “specific learning disability” is defined to mean “a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language,” see 34 C.F.R. § 300.7(c)(10) (2005); Cal. Code Regs. tit. 5, § 3030(j) (2005), provided such disorder results in a “severe discrepancy between [the child’s] intellectual ability and achievement,” see Cal. Code Regs. tit. 5, § 3030(j) E.M. V. PAJARO VALLEY USD 15 included a non-exhaustive list, employed the dictionary meaning of “other” as “another,” and concluded that because a qualifying auditory processing disorder is a “specific learning disability,” “it necessarily follows that an auditory processing disorder cannot at the same time be an ‘other health impairment.’” The court expressed concern that a contrary finding would render superfluous the requirement of showing severe discrepancy to qualify for benefits under the “specific learning disability” category.8 (2005); see also Cal. Educ. Code § 56337 (2005). A “specific learning disability” thus is “specific” to disorders adversely affecting the processing of the written and/or spoken word. As is set forth in the applicable regulations, such processing disorders expressly include “auditory processing” disorders. See Cal. Code Regs. tit. 5, § 3030(j)(1) (2005). As defined in the regulations, an “other health impairment” is a “chronic and acute health problem” that “[a]dversely affects a child’s educational performance.” See 34 C.F.R. § 300.7(c)(9) (2005); see also Cal. Code Regs. tit. 5, § 3030(f) (2005) (providing pupil is entitled to special education where pupil has “chronic and acute health problem[ ]” that “adversely affects a pupil’s educational performance”). 8 The district court reasoned: A contrary finding would effectively negate and render superfluous the statutory and regulatory provisions that a “disorder in a basic psychological process” qualifies as a “specific learning disability” only if, as a result of such disorder, a “severe discrepancy” exists between the child’s intellectual ability and academic achievement. See Cal. Educ. Code § 56337 (2005); Cal. Code Regs. tit. 5, § 3030(j) (2005); see also Hart v. McLucas, 535 F.2d 516, 519 (9th Cir. 1976) (holding “in the construction of administrative regulations, as well as statutes, it is presumed that every phrase serves 16 E.M. V. PAJARO VALLEY USD Having concluded that PVUSD had reasonably determined that Plaintiffs had failed to show a “severe discrepancy” between E.M.’s intellectual ability and academic achievement in 2005, and that E.M.’s auditory processing disorder could not be an “other health impairment,” the district court granted judgment in favor of PVUSD. Plaintiffs filed a timely notice of appeal.