Opinion ID: 202265
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Compensatory Damages Against the Individual Defendants in Their Personal Capacities

Text: 74 The jury determined that each of the individual defendants (in addition to the Commonwealth defendants) was responsible for the compensatory damages award, totaling $48,000. 75 Our discussion earlier demonstrates that the likely basis for the award was under the Rehabilitation Act or § 1983 theories, neither of which had been pleaded against the individual defendants in the amended complaint. We have also discussed why the award (to the extent it represents general damages) is not, in any event, viable as a matter of law on those bases. And so we return to what this case is really about—a claim under the IDEA—to see if the IDEA authorizes a monetary award against individuals in their personal capacities. 76 Plaintiffs do not even attempt to defend the award of damages against the individuals; they merely assert that compensatory damages are generally available against defendants as a group. We have already held that general compensatory damages are not available at all under the IDEA. We add that the IDEA does not permit an award of any monetary relief, including tuition reimbursement and compensatory education, against individual school officials who are named in their personal capacities as defendants in an IDEA action. As the Eighth Circuit recognized in Bradley v. Arkansas Department of Education, 301 F.3d 952, the IDEA is devoid of textual support for ... an award of education expenses against individual defendants; such expenses would be recoverable [only] from the school district (or public agency). Id. at 957 n. 6. Indeed, the plain text of the statute authorizes reimbursement of educational expenses only against the agency, not against any of its officials. See 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(10)(C)(ii) (If the parents of a child with a disability, who previously received special education and related services under the authority of a public agency, enroll the child in a private elementary school or secondary school without the consent of or referral by the public agency, a court or a hearing officer may require the agency to reimburse the parents for the cost of that enrollment if the court or hearing officer finds that the agency had not made a [FAPE] available to the child in a timely manner prior to that enrollment. (emphasis added)). That only the public agency is liable for reimbursement follows naturally from the fact that Congress assigned to the agency the ultimate responsibility for ensuring FAPE. See id. § 1400(c)(6) (States, local educational agencies, and educational service agencies are primarily responsible for providing an education for all children with disabilities....); id. § 1401(9)(A) (requiring that FAPE be provided at public expense, under public supervision and direction, and without charge). No claim for monetary relief can thus be stated against individual defendants under IDEA. 77 This leaves as a possible justification for a monetary award against the individual defendants only the pendent state claims under Law 51, see P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 18, §§ 1351-1359, and Puerto Rico's general negligence statute, see P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 31, §§ 5141-5142. It is, in our view, doubtful that Law 51 (even when combined with the general negligence statute) permits private party actions for damages against individuals in their personal capacities, as opposed to suits against individual defendants in their official capacities. Cf. Bonilla v. Chardon, 18 P.R. Offic. Trans. 696, 704, 710-11 (P.R.1987) (allowing for an award of compensatory damages under the general negligence statute for a gross violation of the predecessor statute to Law 51 against the DOE and its officers in their official capacities). Plaintiffs have simply asserted there is such a claim. We are not inclined to subject individual state officials to personal liability for monetary relief in IDEA analog suits absent a clearer indication from the courts of Puerto Rico that such a claim is available under their law. Federal courts do not engage in wholesale expansion, or indeed creation, of state law theories of action. 78