Opinion ID: 6497375
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Parent’s Remaining Arguments Against

Text: the District Court’s Rejection of Their IDEA Claim Do Not Succeed.
Improperly Exclude Evidence of Facts that Arose After Summit Initially Denied Eligibility. C.M.’s parents argue that the District Court improperly excluded evidence of facts that arose after February 8, 2016, the date that Summit determined that C.M. was ineligible for special education and related services. Specifically, C.M.’s parents sought to introduce a total of five reports that were written after that adverse eligibility determination: three reports from Dr. McGuffog that related to her multiple evaluations of C.M. between July 2016 and February 2017, and two reports from Alana Fichtelberg (the speech pathologist) 27 relating to evaluations of C.M. in July 2016 and February 2017. The purpose for introducing those reports was to prove “that Summit’s ineligibility determination was manifestly unreasonable.” Appellants’ Br. 43. The District Court did not abuse its discretion in declining to supplement the record with those reports. In challenging the outcome of a due process hearing in a federal district court, a party may seek to supplement the record with additional evidence. See 20 U.S.C. § 1415 (i)(2)(C)(ii). But a district court has discretion to exclude evidence that is irrelevant, cumulative, or otherwise unhelpful. See D.K., 696 F.3d at 253 (“[T]he court need not consider evidence that is irrelevant or cumulative . . . .” (citation omitted)); see also Susan N., 70 F.3d at 760 (“While a district court appropriately may exclude [post hoc] evidence, a court must exercise particularized discretion in its rulings so that it will consider evidence relevant, non-cumulative and useful in determining whether Congress’ goal has been reached for the child involved.”). 12 Under the relevance standard, a district court may exclude post hoc evidence offered to prove a breach of a school district’s child-find obligation. The IDEA specifies that a school district’s child-find duty requires a review of “existing evaluation data on the child.” 20 U.S.C. § 1414(c)(1)(A) (emphasis added); see also N.J. Admin. Code § 6A:14-3.5(c) (requiring eligibility determinations to “be based on all 12 See also Maggie Wittlin, Hindsight Evidence, 116 Colum. L. Rev. 1323, 1389 (2016) (explaining that “the Third Circuit . . . considers hindsight evidence only to the extent that it is relevant” to IDEA issues); Note, Dennis Fan, No IDEA What the Future Holds: The Retrospective Evidence Dilemma, 114 Colum. L. Rev. 1503, 1540 (2014) (explaining that the “rule allowing retrospective evidence as articulated by the Third Circuit . . . is best stated as a relevance rule”). 28 assessments conducted” up to the point of decision (emphasis added)). Thus, the child-find duty is based on the “snapshot of the student’s condition at the time of the” school district’s child-find determinations. Lisa M. v. Leander Indep. Sch. Dist., 924 F.3d 205, 215 (5th Cir. 2019); see also L.J. v. Pittsburg Unified Sch. Dist., 850 F.3d 996, 1004 (9th Cir. 2017). And evidence of a child’s behaviors or test results outside of that snapshot – such as reports that did not exist when a school district decided not to evaluate a child or when a school district denied eligibility – are not relevant to whether the school district breached its child-find obligations. But not all facts arising after an adverse eligibility decision are irrelevant. Later-occurring facts may be relevant to other elements of a denial-of-FAPE claim premised on a breach of the child-find duty. For example, such facts may be relevant to whether the child had a disability. Similarly, evidence of later-occurring facts may be relevant to determining how long or to what degree a school district denied a FAPE to a disabled child. Here, the five later-in-time reports were not proffered to prove that C.M. was disabled or to establish the amount of time that Summit did not provide special education and related services. Instead, those reports of C.M.’s performance on subsequent tests sought to show that the school district breached its child-find obligation. Yet, as explained above, the reports are irrelevant to that issue. Accordingly, the District Court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the five reports from the record after “considering” them and finding that they are not “relevant.” J.M. v. Summit City Bd. of Educ., 2020 WL 6281719, at  (D.N.J. Oct. 27, 2020). 13 13 Our dissenting colleague fears that preventing the use of post hoc evidence to prove a breach of the child-find duty “encourages schools to conduct cursory evaluations in the first instance.” Dissent at 7–8. He would extend precedent from 29
Crediting the Hearing Officer’s Adverse Credibility Determinations. C.M.’s parents also contend that the District Court erred by deferring to the hearing officer’s negative credibility determination with respect to Dr. McGuffog’s testimony at the due process hearing. As a general principle, a reviewing court deferentially reviews a fact-finder’s assessment of a witness’s credibility. See Cooper v. Harris, 137 S. Ct. 1455, 1474 (2017) (explaining that appellate courts “give singular deference to a trial court’s judgments about the credibility of witnesses” because “the various cues that ‘bear so heavily on the listener’s understanding of and belief in what is said’ are lost on an appellate court later sifting through a paper record” (quoting Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 575 (1985))). And in the IDEA context, when a federal court reviews a hearing officer’s credibility determination, it must credit that assessment “unless the nontestimonial, extrinsic evidence in the record would justify a contrary conclusion.” D.K., other areas of IDEA jurisprudence to the child-find context. But the IDEA precludes that approach in the child-find context because the child-find obligation requires school districts to review “existing evaluation data on the child.” 20 U.S.C. § 1414(c)(1)(A) (emphasis added). And the irrelevance of post hoc evidence in assessing a child-find breach does not legitimatize cursory evaluations. To the contrary, this Circuit’s jurisprudence already recognizes that if a school district conducts “a poorly designed and ineffective round of testing” or fails to evaluate a child when “school officials are on notice of behavior that is likely to indicate a disability,” then the school district breaches its child-find obligation. D.K., 696 F.3d at 250; see also 20 U.S.C. § 1414(b)(3)(B) (requiring school districts to evaluate “in all areas of suspected disability”). 30 696 F.3d at 243 (quoting Shore Reg’l High Sch. Bd. of Educ. v. P.S., 381 F.3d 194, 199 (3d Cir. 2004)); see also Ridley, 680 F.3d at 273 n.7. Here, C.M.’s parents identify no nontestimonial, extrinsic evidence that contradicts the hearing officer’s adverse credibility determinations. Without a valid basis to diverge from the hearing officer’s negative credibility assessments, the District Court did not err.
Rejecting the Claim for Declaratory Judgment. C.M.’s parents further contend that the District Court erred by not entering a declaratory judgment related to two events that took place after they filed their due process complaint. Specifically, C.M.’s parents seek a judgment declaring that Summit should have implemented additional interventions in its later-developed IEP for C.M. and that Summit owes them the costs of private-school tuition. Since those events had not occurred when C.M.’s parents filed their due process complaint, they were not raised in the due process complaint. Yet without the consent of the opposing party, which Summit did not provide, a due process complaint limits the scope of the issues that may be raised at the due process hearing and later reviewed in court. See 20 U.S.C. § 1415(f)(3)(B) (preventing the party who requests the due process hearing from raising “issues at the due process hearing that were not raised in the [due process complaint]” without the other party’s consent); id. § 1415(i)(2)(A) (providing that a party aggrieved by the hearing officer’s findings and decision may bring a civil action “with respect to the [due process] complaint presented”). C.M.’s parents could have sought to amend their due process complaint once those events occurred. See 20 U.S.C. § 1415(c)(2)(E) (describing options for amendment); N.J. Admin. Code § 6A:14-2.7(i) (same). Or they could have challenged those events through a separate, later-in-time due 31 process complaint. But they did neither. Without doing so, they are not entitled to a declaratory judgment on either issue, and the District Court did not err in rejecting their request for such relief.