Opinion ID: 198911
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: IDEA Requirement of Exhaustion of Administrative Remedies

Text: 22 The statutory provisions of subchapter II of IDEA are attentive to the details of administrative process. Section 1415(b)(6) requires states to provide the opportunity to present complaints with respect to any matter relating to the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of the [disabled] child . . . . The IDEA due process hearing provision, 20 U.S.C. § 1415(f)(1), mandates that parents who have filed a complaint under IDEA shall have an opportunity for an impartial due process hearing . . . conducted by the State educational agency or by the local educational agency, as determined by State law or by the State educational agency. A party to an IDEA due process hearing has the right to present evidence, and to confront, cross-examine, and compel the attendance of witnesses; the right to be accompanied and advised by counsel and by individuals with special knowledge or training with respect to the problems of children with disabilities; the right to a written, or at the option of the parents, electronic verbatim record of such hearing; and the right to a written or, at the option of the parents, electronic findings of fact and decisions. See id. § 1415(h). The hearing officer may not be an employee of the state or local educational agency involved in the care or education of the disabled child. See id. § 1415(f)(3). 23 IDEA requires recourse to this due process hearing when plaintiffs seek relief available under subchapter II of IDEA even if the suit is brought pursuant to a different statute. See id. Section 1415(l) reads:Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to restrict or limit the rights, procedures, and remedies available under the Constitution, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, title V of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, or other Federal statutes protecting the rights of children and youth with disabilities, except that before the filing of a civil action under such laws seeking relief that is available under this subchapter, the procedures under subsections (f) and (g) of this section shall be exhausted to the same extent as would be required had the action been brought under this subchapter. 9 24 Weber argues that she does not have to meet the IDEA exhaustion requirement because, as a parent, she does not have standing to file her own retaliation claim under IDEA, and hence the relief she seeks with her Section 504 claim is not available to her under IDEA. We reject her standing argument. 25 Unlike the Rehabilitation Act, IDEA lacks a broad enforcement provision granting standing to any person aggrieved by violations of the Act, or an implementing regulation that protects any individual who has been intimidated, threatened, coerced or discriminated against because she made a complaint under the Act. The issue confronting us, therefore, is whether there is a basis in the language and statutory framework of IDEA for Weber to file a retaliation claim in her individual capacity. We first look to the basic principles of standing to determine whether Weber may file such a retaliation claim under IDEA. 26 Standing doctrine encompasses both constitutional and prudential requirements. 10 The constitutional standing rules ensure the existence of a concrete case or controversy as required by Article III: [A]t an irreducible minimum, Art. III requires the party who invokes the court's authority to show that he personally has suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant, and that the injury fairly can be traced to the challenged action and is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision. Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 472 (1982)(internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Weber meets these constitutional requirements: the alleged retaliation resulted in injury in fact which can be redressed through the declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief requested by Weber for all counts of her complaint. 27 In addition to the constitutional requirements, the standing inquiry encompasses prudential considerations aimed at preventing courts from adjudicating questions of broad social import where no individual rights would be vindicated. Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797, 804 (1985). To meet the prudential requirements, the plaintiff's challenge must rest on her own legal rights and interests, not the rights of third parties, see Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 499 (1975), and the harm asserted cannot be a generalized grievance shared in equal measure by all or a large class of citizens, id. The claim must also fall within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute or constitutional guarantee in question, Association of Data Processing Serv. Org., Inc. v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 153 (1970). The zone of interests test does not require an indication of Congressional purpose to benefit the would-be plaintiff; instead, the proper inquiry is simply whether the interest sought to be protected by the complainant is arguably within the zone of interests to be protected . . . by the statute. National Credit Union Admin. v. First Nat'l Bank & Trust Co., 522 U.S. 479, 492 (1998) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted) (alteration and emphasis in original). Only this last element, the zone of interests, is at issue in this case. 28 As noted, we review the language and structure of IDEA to determine whether Weber's retaliation claim falls within the zone of interests protected by IDEA. That review reveals the central role played by parents in assuring that their disabled child receives a free appropriate public education, 20 U.S.C. § 1400(d)(1)(A). The IDEA statement of purposes explicitly recognizes the statute's mission to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities and parents of such children are protected. Id. § 1400(d)(1)(B)(emphasis added). The centerpiece of IDEA is the Individualized Education Plan, which describes the disabled child's academic goals and special education services. The statute establishes an elaborate mechanism for parental involvement by designating parents as part of the Individualized Education Plan team, see id. § 1414(d)(1)(B)(i), requiring revision of the IEP to address information provided either by or to parents regarding the child's educational needs and services, see id. § 1414(d)(4)(A)(ii)(III), and mandating that parents must be members of any group that makes decisions on the educational placement of their child, id. § 1414(f). In addition to extensive procedures for parental involvement in the Individualized Education Plan, IDEA also ensures the central role of parents by requiring parental consent to educational evaluations, see id. § 1414(a)(1)(c)(i) & (c)(3), assigning a surrogate parent to protect the rights of the child when the child's parents are not known or cannot be located, see 20 U.S.C. § 1415(b)(2), and mandating an opportunity for the parents of a child with a disability to examine all records relating to such child, id. § 1415(b)(1). IDEA also authorizes the Secretary of Education to make grants to support parent training and information centers to help parents understand their child's disability, participate in decision-making processes and the development of individualized education programs, and utilize IDEA's procedural safeguards. See id. § 1482. In sum, Weber's claim easily meets the arguably within the zone of interests standard, and she would have standing under IDEA to bring her retaliation complaint. 29 Furthermore, the IDEA complaint provision in subchapter II affords the opportunity to present complaints with respect to any matter relating to the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of the child, or the provision of a free appropriate public education to such child. See id. § 1415(b)(6) (emphasis added). Weber's claim of retaliation is literally related to the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of [her] child, and to her efforts to gain for him the provision of a free appropriate public education. As Weber has completely failed to explain to us why she does not therefore have relief that is available through an IDEA due process hearing that must be exhausted, 20 U.S.C. § 1445(k), (l), we conclude that Weber had to invoke the due process hearing procedures of IDEA before filing her retaliation claim in federal court pursuant to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. 11 30 We are tempted to leave it at that. For the sake of clarity and completeness, however, we note that the relief available question might be a close one if Weber had presented any arguments on it. That is so because there are exceptions to the IDEA exhaustion requirement based on the concept of futility. A plaintiff does not have to exhaust administrative remedies if she can show that the agency's adoption of an unlawful general policy or practice would make resort to the agency futile, or that the administrative remedies afforded by subchapter II of IDEA are inadequate given the relief sought. 12 See Christopher W. v. Portsmouth Sch. Comm., 877 F.2d 1089, 1094 (1st Cir. 1989). This latter form of futility overlaps with the relief available language of § 1415(l) in the sense that relief is not available within the meaning of § 1415(l) if the due process hearing provided by subchapter II of IDEA does not provide relief that addresses the claim of the complainant. This conclusion follows from the logic of the exhaustion requirement set forth in § 1415(l). It would make no sense to require, in the language of § 1415(l), a party with a claim under the Constitution, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, title V of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, or other Federal statutes protecting the rights of children and youth with disabilities to first participate in an IDEA due process hearing if the relief available through such a hearing would not address the claim of the party. 31 The district court found that Weber did not meet any of the futility exceptions to the exhaustion requirement. On appeal, Weber does not challenge this conclusion despite the fact that the regulations regarding due process hearings under IDEA do not appear to read related broadly. Instead, they seem to provide for due process hearings that directly challenge proposals or decisions about the child's educational situation. See 34 C.F.R. §§ 300.503, 300.507; R.I. Code R. 08 010 002-47 (prior notice), -50 (Impartial due process hearing). In the face of these provisions, a hearing officer might refuse to consider a claim of retaliation like Weber's. Cf. Rockbridge County Public Schools, EHLR 401:248 (1987) (state review of hearing officer's decision holding that complaints about parent access to records and other procedural violations were outside the hearing officer's jurisdiction under Virginia regulations). The difficult issue in this case is not who has standing to bring a complaint (the only issue that Weber raises), but rather what is the scope of the hearing provided. 32 Weber does not point to these regulations (or anything else) to establish that the relief she seeks is not available because the regulations limit the scope of the due process hearing provided by IDEA. Nor does she argue that pursuing a due process hearing would be unduly burdensome due to the school district's purportedly retaliatory tactics. Cf. Honig v. Doe, 484 U.S. 305, 326-27 (1988) (burden of demonstrating exception from exhaustion requirement on party seeking to avoid requirement); Christopher W. v. Portsmouth Sch. Comm., 877 F.2d 1089, 1095 (1st Cir. 1989) (exceptions to exhaustion requirement include cases in which further agency proceedings may be futile, and in which exhaustion will work severe harm upon a litigant). We refuse to construct these arguments for her, see e.g., Massachusetts School of Law at Andover v. American Bar Ass'n, 142 F.3d 26, 43 (1st Cir. 1998), and take no position on their merits. 13 33 In light of the arguments made, therefore, we must conclude that Weber had to comply with the exhaustion requirement of § 1415(l). Anticipating the possibility of this ruling, Weber suggests that she complied with this requirement through the numerous administrative complaints that she filed. This argument fails. Although Weber filed three CRP complaints with the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, two complaints with the Office of Equity and Access, and participated in a mediation on the issue of declassification, she never initiated the due process hearing described in IDEA. IDEA's mandate is explicit: plaintiffs must exhaust IDEA's impartial due process hearing procedures in order to bring a civil action under subchapter II of IDEA or any such law[] seeking relief that is also available under subchapter II of IDEA. 20 U.S.C. § 1415(l). 34 The case law confirms that state and federal complaint procedures other than the IDEA due process hearing do not suffice for exhaustion purposes. Even the CRP procedures (formerly known as EDGAR), which implement IDEA, are not an adequate alternative to exhausting administrative remedies under IDEA. Association for Community Living in Colo. v. Romer, 992 F.2d 1040, 1043-44 (10th Cir. 1993)(analyzing the EDGAR provisions); Megan v. Independent Sch. Dist., 57 F. Supp. 2d 776, 790 (D. Minn. 1999)(reaching the same conclusion after the amendments that converted EDGAR into the CRP implementing regulations of IDEA). 14 In Christopher W. v. Portsmouth School Committee, 877 F.2d 1089, 1099 (1st Cir. 1989), we held that a plaintiff who had failed to pursue a due process hearing but had filed an EDGAR complaint had not satisfactorily exhausted administrative remedies. 35 Therefore, based on the statutory language and case precedent, we conclude that Weber's complaints pursuant to the federal CRP and the Rhode Island complaint procedure did not fulfill the IDEA exhaustion requirement. The district court properly granted summary judgment to defendants on Count IV of Weber's complaint, and we affirm without prejudice as to any future action Weber might bring after satisfying the exhaustion requirement. 36 Affirmed. Each party shall bear its own costs.