Special Education Today

My IDEA Remedies Tour continues next week in Portland, Maine. I will be addressing the Remedy of Reimbursement for a Unilateral Placement. I'll also be doing a continuing legal education session on a special ed law update. The 6th annual Education Law Conference will feature excellent sessions on all aspects of law and the schools. The Wingspread group will also have meetings and sessions there; it tries to make legal education and other types of education more inclusive. You can review the conference website here.

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There is still time to register for the conference which is sponsored by the University of Southern Maine and the university of Maine Law School. Here is a registration link.

I had a great time last week on the first leg of the tour. I spoke on the remedy of Compensatory Education for special ed law violations at the Seattle University Academy for IDEA Hearing Officers and ALJs. I met a bunch of great people and got to spend some time with some old friends. The networking at these conferences is as valuable as the educational sessions. If you can, you should go.

Those of you who follow this blog know that I was concerned about the school district's argument that hearing officers lacked authority to grant reimbursement. I had never heard this argument made before. NOTE: I have a bias here, I am a due process hearing officer for a growing number of states and I train hearing officers across the country. A few commentators have dismissed this issue as a "nonstarter," but at least three justices asked questions concerning the argument at the oral argument. Maybe others gave this argument little attention, but believe me, hearing officers were taking it seriously.

As my preliminary analysis noted the supremes specifically noted at page 17 of the slip opinion that both hearing officers and courts have the authority to grant reimbursement for un

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unilateral placements in proper circumstances. The Court explained its reasoning in footnote 11 on page 13 of the majority opinion.

Specifically, the Court ruled that the district's argument concerning hearing authority ignores the Burlington decision. The high court stated that the Burlington decision interpreted IDEA "... to authorize hearing officers as well as courts to award reimbursement notwithstanding ...(Section 615's) silence with regard to haring officers." n. 11, Slip Op at p. 13. The opinion goes on to state that by amending IDEA without altering the text of the section, Congress implicitly adopted the Supreme Court's construction of the statute regarding hearing officer authority to award reimbursement.

Forest Grove Sch Dist v TA 557 U.S. ____, 109 LRP 36046 (6/22/2009) is an important decision for hearing officers to cite in their decisions. It is clear that this decision reiterates the ruling of Burlington that hearing officers ,like courts, have broad equitable discretion to award an appropriate remedy where there has been a violation of IDEA.

here are some additional resources: First, a couple editorials applauding the ruling: St. Louis Dispatch and Boston Globe. The SCOTUS blog resource page concerning this case includes analysis, briefs by the parties, amicus briefs and a transcript of the oral argument at the high court. A law review article written before the decision discusses some policy concerns can be found here. This link has three perspectives on the ruling.