Opinion ID: 2169865
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Futility of the Administrative Process

Text: First, plaintiff asserts that the department of education violated the IDEA when it failed to resolve his complaint within forty-five days of his request for the hearing. We interpret this argument as contending that continuing with the administrative process would have been futile. A plaintiff does not have to exhaust administrative remedies if [he or] she can show that the agency's adoption of an unlawful general policy would make resort to the agency futile   . Rose, 214 F.3d at 210-11. Although plaintiff cites provisions of the IDEA to support his argument that the department of education did not proceed in a timely manner, our research has divulged that the forty-five-day time limitation actually is the product of state and federal regulation. The applicable state regulation provides that the department of education shall render a final decision, which must be mailed to each of the parties, no later than 45 days after the receipt of a request for a hearing. XX-XXX-XXX R.I.Code R. § 300.511(a) (Weil 2006). That forty-five-day limitation is not nearly as strict as plaintiff indicates; the regulation expressly allows a hearing officer to grant specific extensions of time beyond the [forty-five-day time period] at the request of either party. Id. § 300.511(b). The federal regulation employs identical language. 34 C.F.R. § 300.511 (2005). Since the time period may be extended upon a unilateral request by either party, the forty-five-day limitation really is more in the nature of a guideline than a rigid requirement. [9] According to plaintiff's own complaint, the hearing officer postponed or continued several hearing dates, but did so at the request of the school department or by party agreement. For example, the postponement of the hearing dates from late January to February 24, 2004, which was the last delay before plaintiff filed his civil suit, was requested by the school department. Furthermore, although plaintiff did file his request for a due process hearing in July 2003, he agreed to postpone the hearing from September 4, 2003, to October 3, 2003. Therefore, because of these requested postponements and continuances, we cannot hold that the school department violated the applicable regulations. This is not to say that a hearing officer repeatedly may grant continuances of a due process hearing in perpetuity as long as the school department requests continuances. We expressly indicate that any attempt to abuse this exception to the forty-five-day limitation could result in our holding that further proceedings before the administrative agency would have been futile, but that is not the case here. Instead, the complaint reveals that the parents of John Doe and the school department had little dialogue before he requested a due process hearing in the summer before the school year. Accordingly, the hearing officer obviously attempted to bring the parties together for an initial IEP meeting, which was not achieved until early November 2003, before the parties proceeded to the more adversarial due process hearing. It seems reasonable to infer that some of these continuances, especially those granted during the autumn of the school year, are the sort of continuances anticipated by those who drafted the exception to the forty-five-day limitation. 2