Opinion ID: 2973286
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The 2004 Reenactment and Its

Text: Aftermath Prior to 2004, the IDEA did not include a statute of limitations. See Steven I. v. Cent. Bucks Sch. Dist., 618 F.3d 411, 413 (3d Cir. 2010). Congress found this problematic because parents could knowingly wait for many years to file complaints, resulting in school districts that were “often surprised by claims . . . involving issues that occurred in an elementary school program when the child may currently be a high school student.” H.R. Rep, 108-77, at 115 (2003). Waiting many years to bring actions on behalf of a child, Congress reasoned, jeopardized that child’s education and created distrust between school administrators and parents. Id. 13 In the 2004 reauthorization of the IDEA, Congress sought to remedy this problem by adding a statute of limitations to 20 U.S.C. § 1415(f), which is entitled “Impartial due process hearing” and sets forth the procedures for the life cycle of such hearings, from the initial receipt of the due process complaint that constitutes the request for the hearing, 20 U.S.C. § 1415(f)(1), through the findings of the hearing officer, 20 U.S.C. § 1415(f)(3)(E). The new subsection, § 1415(f)(3)(C), was entitled “Timeline for requesting hearing” and states: 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, or, if the State has an explicit time limitation for requesting such a hearing under this subchapter, in such time as the State law allows. 20 U.S.C. § 1415(f)(3)(C). Accordingly, under the IDEA parents must file their due process complaint within two years of the date they “knew or should have known” of the violation, unless the state has its own statute of limitations, in which case the state’s statute controls. Id.; D.K. v. Abington Sch. Dist., 696 F.3d 233, 244 & n.2 (3d Cir. 2012). The reauthorization also added two equitable tolling exceptions to this statute of limitations, which apply regardless of whether the state has enacted its own statute of limitations: specific misrepresentations by the school district and the withholding 14 of statutorily mandated disclosures. 20 U.S.C. § 1415(f)(3)(D).7 Section 1415 overall is a lengthy and detailed section, the “entire purpose” of which “is to provide parents ‘procedural safeguards with respect to the provision of a free appropriate public education.’” D.M. v. N.J. Dep’t of Educ., --- F.3d ----, No. 14-4044, 2015 WL 5255088, at  (3d Cir. Sept. 10, 2015) (quoting 20 U.S.C. § 1415(a)).8 The section opens with § 1415(a), entitled “Establishment of procedures,” which requires state and local educational agencies to “establish and maintain procedures in accordance with this section to ensure that children with disabilities and their parents are guaranteed procedural safeguards with respect to the provision of a free appropriate public education” by these agencies. 20 U.S.C. § 1415(a). It proceeds in § 1415(b), entitled “Types of procedures,” to list out and briefly summarize “[t]he procedures required by this section,” 20 U.S.C. § 1415(b), (b)(2)-(8), in roughly the same order these procedures are then more fully described in the subsections that follow, 20 U.S.C. § 1415(c)-(f). Among the procedures listed in § 1415(b), even before the 2004 reenactment, was “an 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,” 20 U.S.C. § 1415(b)(6) 7 These exceptions are not at issue in this case. 8 We describe in some detail here the structure of this section because, as will become apparent, it provides important context for our interpretation of the two subsections at issue. 15 (1999) (amended 2004), corresponding to the fuller explanation of the due process hearing procedures set forth in § 1415(f) (1999) (amended 2004). Accordingly, along with the addition of the statute of limitations to § 1415(f)(3)(C), the 2004 reenactment also amended § 1415(b)(6) to read: (b) Types of procedures The procedures required by this section shall include the following: . . . (6) An opportunity for any party to present a complaint— (A) 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; and (B) which sets forth an alleged violation that occurred not more than 2 years before the date the parent or public agency knew or should have known about the alleged action that forms the basis of the complaint, or, if the State has an explicit time limitation for presenting such a complaint 16 under this subchapter, in such time as the State law allows, except that the exceptions to the timeline described in subsection (f)(3)(D) shall apply to the timeline described in this subparagraph. 20 U.S.C § 1415(b)(6) (emphasis added). With this amendment, the complaint procedure described at § 1415(b)(6)(B) came to mirror the statute of limitations at § 1415(f)(3)(C) in almost all respects: they both describe a two-year time limit that hinges on the reasonable discovery date; they both provide that any state statute of limitations will override this timeline; and they both incorporate the two exceptions to the statute of limitations set forth in § 1415(f)(3)(D).9 Unlike § 1415(f)(3)(C), however, 9 While § 1415(b)(6)(B) describes “present[ing] a complaint,” and § 1415(f)(3)(C) describes “request[ing] an impartial due process hearing,” both sections address the filing of the same due process complaint because there is no dispute that presenting a complaint is merely the vehicle by which a due process hearing is requested. See 20 U.S.C. § 1415(f)(1)(A) (noting that a hearing is held “[w]henever a complaint has been received under subsection (b)(6)”); see also United States Department of Education, Questions and Answers on IDEA Part B Dispute Resolution Procedures, OSEP Memo 13-08, 34 (2013) (explaining that “[t]he IDEA Amendments of 2004 made significant changes to IDEA’s due process procedures, and parties no longer have the right to request a due process hearing directly” but instead “first must file a due process complaint”). 17 § 1415(b)(6)(B)’s two-year limitations period runs backward instead of forward from the reasonable discovery date. The differences in the language of these provisions and the fact that they appear to move in opposite directions from the reasonable discovery date, has given rise to confusion in the wake of the 2004 reenactment, with district courts within this Circuit interpreting them in a range of ways. Some have construed them to limit redress to the two years preceding a complaint. See, e.g., D.C. v. Mount Olive Twp. Bd. of Educ., No. 12-5592, 2014 WL 1293534, -22 (D.N.J. Mar. 31, 2014). Some have interpreted them to impose a filing deadline but not to limit the remedy for timely-filed claims. See, e.g., Cent. Sch. Dist. v. K.C. ex rel. S.C., No. 11-6869, 2013 WL 3367484, at  n.6 (E.D. Pa. July 3, 2013) (collecting cases) (“We also agree with the conclusion reached by several courts within this district, that the IDEA’s statute of limitations does not apply to limit the permissible period of compensatory educational awards.”). And at least four, including the District Court here, have adopted the 2+2 analysis. See, e.g., G.L., 2013 WL 6858963, at -6. The District contends there can be no confusion because we have already addressed and resolved the question of how these provisions interact with each other and how they apply to claims dating back a number of years in Steven I., 618 F.3d 411, and D.K., 696 F.3d 233. That resolution, according to the District, is that we “definitively stated that claims are barred where they are alleged to occur two years prior to the date of filing.” Appellant’s Br. 8 (citing Steven I., 618 F.3d at 417, and D.K., 696 F.3d at 254). This argument reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of our prior cases. Those cases held that § 1415(f)(3)(C) bars claims that are not filed within two years after the parents “knew or should have 18 known” about the injury—a proposition that is now wellestablished and is not disputed by either party to this case. However, neither Steven I. nor D.K. says anything about claims that are filed within two years of that “knew or should have known” date but happen to relate to an injury that took place more than two years before the complaint was filed. In Steven I., we considered a case brought by parents who had knowingly sat on a claim for years, see Mark v. Cent. Bucks Sch. Dist., No. 08-571, 2009 WL 415767, at  (E.D. Pa. Feb. 18, 2009), rev’d and remanded sub nom. Steven I., 618 F.3d at 417, and held that § 1415(f)(3)(C)’s two-year statute of limitations applies retroactively to claims that predated the 2004 amendments and “bars any causes of action that accrued prior to” two years before the filing of the due process complaint, even if the violation continues into the two-year window before the complaint was filed. 618 F.3d at 417 (emphasis added). Likewise, in D.K., where we held that the statutory tolling provisions of § 1415(f)(3)(D) precluded application of common law tolling doctrines and were therefore the exclusive exceptions to the IDEA’s two-year statute of limitations, we reaffirmed our rejection of the “continuing violation” doctrine and held that the claims in that case, which we observed had been discovered years earlier, were, as the parents conceded, “limited to the twoyear time period” before the filing of the complaint under § 1415(f)(3)(C). D.K, 696 F.3d at 248, 254. Indeed, contrary to the District’s reading, we expressly stated in D.K. that parents must request a due process hearing, not within two years of the occurrence of the injury, but “within two years of ‘the date the parent . . . knew or should have known about the alleged action that forms the basis of the complaint.’” Id. at 19 244 (alterations in original) (quoting 20 U.S.C. § 1415(f)(3)(C)). Although we observed in passing in D.K. that this twoyear statute of limitations in § 1415(f)(3)(C) was “the same” two-year period that parents had to file an administrative complaint under § 1415(b)(6)(B), id., we did not there and have not since had occasion to reconcile the differences between the language of § 1415(b)(6)(B) and § 1415(f)(3)(C) or to consider how these provisions affect the remedy available for claims spanning multiple years that were filed within two years of the date the parents first “knew or should have known” about the basis for those claims. Nor has any other Court of Appeals addressed the interplay between § 1415(f)(3)(C) and § 1415(b)(6)(B). We resolve these issues today.