Opinion ID: 4538518
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Child-Find Obligation

Text: The ALJ and district court determined that the District breached its obligation to identify the Student by the spring of her eighth-grade year as a child eligible for special education. In addition to a FAPE, an essential aspect of the IDEA is the requirement that “children with disabilities . . . who are in need of special education and related services, are identified, located, and evaluated” by states. 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(3)(A); see Forest Grove Sch. Dist. v. T.A., 557 U.S. 230, 245 (2009) (describing this requirement as one of “paramount importance”). The District contends it had no duty to identify the Student as eligible for special education, at least not until the parents requested an evaluation in the spring of the Student’s junior year. The District also contends that if such a duty existed the Student’s claim is barred by the IDEA’s two-year statute of limitations. We are not persuaded by the District’s arguments. -13- As early as the spring of 2015 the District knew that the Student was missing significant time at school as a result of her mental-health issues. The dean of students at her middle school knew that the Student was receiving day treatment at a psychiatric facility. Confronted with this situation, the dean of students met with the Student’s teachers to discuss the situation, focusing on how to grade her in her classes given her absences. Despite their knowledge that the Student was suffering from mental-health issues that impacted her ability to attend school, District staff did not refer the Student for a special-education evaluation because she had above-average intellectual ability. The District continued to embrace this decision until the parents requested an evaluation near the end of the Student’s sophomore year. Even if the District was confronted with an unusual case marked by some confusion, in just the same way that the Student’s eligibility for special education was not foreclosed by her intellect, the District’s child-find obligation was not suspended because of her innate intelligence. The preponderance of the evidence supports the conclusion that the District breached its child-find obligation. The District contends that even if it breached its child-find obligation, the breach occurred in the spring of 2015 and the IDEA’s two-year statute of limitations had run by the time the Student’s parents requested a due-process hearing on June 27, 2017. See 20 U.S.C. § 1415(f)(3)(C) (“A parent or agency shall request an impartial due process hearing within 2 years of the date the parent or agency knew or should have known about the alleged action that forms the basis of the complaint . . . .”).2 Assuming the parents knew or should have known they had a child-find claim when the Student was an eighth-grader, the District staff responsible for identifying the Student in the ninth and tenth grades likewise failed to fulfill their child-find obligation. In other words, the violation was not a single event like a decision to suspend or expel a student; instead the violation was repeated well into the limitations period. Cf. In re: 2 Under these circumstances, we do not need to reach the issue of whether the IDEA’s statute of limitations represents an occurrence rule or a discovery rule. See Avila v. Spokane Sch. Dist. 81, 852 F.3d 936, 941–42 (9th Cir. 2017); G.L. v. Ligonier Valley Sch. Dist. Auth., 802 F.3d 601, 611–13 (3d Cir. 2015). -14- Mirapex Prods. Liab. Litig., 912 F.3d 1129, 1134 (8th Cir. 2019) (noting that “breaches of continuing or recurring obligations” give rise to new claims with their own limitation periods). Any claim of a breach falling outside of the IDEA’s two-year statute of limitations would be untimely. But, because of the District’s continued violation of its child-find duty, at least some of the Student’s claims of breach of that duty accrued within the applicable period of limitation.