Court Opinion

ID: 9472651
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:06:39.466988+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:03.596343
License: Public Domain

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM,
Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I join Judge Williams’s thoughtful treatment of this developing area in all respects save one. I would conclude that no independent constitutional claim was stated by Diane1 for the defendants’ conditioning of her right to education on her mother’s attendance at counseling sessions.
*494The Supreme Court in Smith v. Robinson, — U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 3457, 82 L.Ed.2d 746 (1984) accommodated competing policies. Parents and students cannot walk around the detailed remedial scheme of the EAHCA by resort to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or recover attorney fees under § 1988 by adding a citation of § 1983 to a claim under EAHCA. At the same time, suits under § 1983 asserting distinct constitutional claims arising from the educational setting are not foreclosed. In this, I agree with the majority opinion.
Diane’s claim, however, is not of independent constitutional significance. That is, it is not distinct from her effort to obtain the substantive benefits of the act. The claim that a constitutional right was infringed by the state agency’s requirement that the parent participate in group counseling as a part of the child’s individual education program is at bottom an assertion that the state was misreading the act. This claim was in fact proceeding along the administrative path set by Congress when disrupted by the filing of this federal suit, which sought no more, in my view, than the substantive benefits of EAHCA.
The supposed constitutional right claimed to have been invaded by the state’s insisting upon participation in group counseling, as a condition to entitlement to the statutory benefit, cannot state a claim independent of the EAHCA unless it would be beyond the power of Congress to impose such a condition. If Congress could constitutionally require such participation, this claim cannot reach beyond a contention that Congress did not intend to allow such a requirement and that the state is misreading the EAHCA. After Smith v. Robinson, such claims are not cognizable under § 1983. The majority’s holding must therefore rest on a denial that Congress has such power — a result that I am not prepared to accept. Cf. Dublino v. New York State Dept. of Social Services, 348 F.Supp. 290 (W.D.N.Y.1972) (3-judge court) (state can constitutionally condition public assistance on recipient’s obtaining employment), rev’d on other grounds, 413 U.S. 405, 93 S.Ct. 2507, 37 L.Ed.2d 688 (1973); see generally Idaho Dept. of Employment v. Smith, 434 U.S. 100, 98 S.Ct. 327, 54 L.Ed.2d 324 (1977) (minimal scrutiny is applied to legislative classifications affecting the distribution of government benefits).

. While dubitante, I agree that Diane's mother's claim (if she had one, a matter we do not decide) is independent of EAHCA.