Perfect Adherence or Material Deviation?: the Eleventh Circuit's Bright Idea in Resolving Individualized Education Plan Implementation Cases
| Publication year | 2020 |
Perfect Adherence or Material Deviation?: The Eleventh Circuit's Bright IDEA in Resolving Individualized Education Plan Implementation Cases
Chelsea Henderson
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I. Introduction
In 2002, L.J., a child with intellectual disabilities and autism, began using an individualized education plan (IEP).1 This IEP was meant to provide L.J. with the free appropriate public education (FAPE) that is guaranteed to all children across the United States. However, L.J.'s mother did not believe the School Board of Broward County adequately implemented L.J.'s IEP.2 L.J.'s mother's concern resulted in an almost twenty-year legal battle between L.J. and the Broward County School Board.3 This battle finally ended in June 2019, when the United States
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Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit joined four other circuits4 in holding that the proper standard in determining whether a child's IEP is being adequately implemented is the "material deviation" standard.5
Congress recognized the right to a FAPE in the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.6 Known today as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA),7 FAPEs are guaranteed to all intellectually disabled children across the country through the use of IEPs.8 Generally, parents can make two different legal challenges to their child's IEP: content challenges and implementation challenges.9 The Supreme Court of the United States has addressed IEP content challenges in a number of cases.10 However, the Court has yet to determine the proper standard for implementing a child's IEP.11 As a result, the circuit courts have been left to determine what standard to use in IEP implementation cases.
The plaintiff, L.J., has a speech-language impairment and autism. He attended Broward County public schools from kindergarten to middle school, with periods of home-schooling intermixed. During L.J.'s third-grade year, staff at L.J.'s elementary school worked with L.J.'s mother to create an IEP. This IEP followed L.J. through elementary school, but once L.J. began sixth-grade, the school board proposed a change in L.J.'s IEP. School professionals on L.J.'s IEP Team wanted to update his IEP to accommodate the new middle-school environment. Meanwhile, L.J. displayed disruptive behavior, including refusing to attend school. When L.J. refused to attend school, his mother chose to home-school him.12
L.J. returned to school in the seventh grade, but his attendance issues remained. In all, L.J. missed over 100 days of school due to his refusal to attend class and his multiple illnesses. Not only did L.J. miss
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approximately three-fourths of the school year, but when he did attend school, L.J. either engaged in violent outbursts in the classroom or left school early. Once L.J. was in his eighth-grade year, his mother once again unenrolled him from school and began home-schooling L.J.13
During this tumultuous time for L.J. and the school, L.J.'s mother began a lengthy legal battle with the Broward County School Board spanning from 2002 to 2019.14 In 2007, L.J.'s mother filed a final complaint against the Broward County School Board. In this complaint, L.J.'s mother challenged the implementation of L.J.'s elementary school IEP during the "stay-put" period. Although the ALJ had previously found that the school had adequately implemented the elementary IEP, L.J.'s mother claimed that the school failed to properly implement the elementary IEP during her appeal to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.15
It is this last complaint that brings us to the current case. An ALJ heard the new complaint during eighteen hearings that spanned two years.16 This ALJ found that the school had not adequately implemented the elementary school's IEP during L.J.'s seventh- and eighth-grade years—the years when L.J.'s mother appealed the first ALJ's decision to the district court. After the ALJ sided with L.J., both L.J.'s mother and the school filed separate complaints in the district court.17 L.J.'s mother asked the court to enforce the ALJ's order, along
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with additional relief,18 while the school challenged the ALJ's findings and order. After filing these complaints, both parties cross-moved for judgment on the administrative record.19
Instead of ruling on the motions, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued an order requiring both parties to supply supplemental briefing, thus deferring any decision on the merits of both the school and L.J.'s complaints.20 As a result, the ALJ ordered both parties to brief the applicable standard of review for IEP implementation cases.21 Five years after the supplemental briefing was filed,22 the district court reversed the ALJ's decision and entered judgment in favor of the school, finding that, under the materiality standard, the school did not fail to implement L.J.'s IEP during the "stay-put" period.23 L.J.'s mother then appealed the district court's decision to the Eleventh Circuit.24 The issue for the Eleventh Circuit was whether the school's implementation of L.J.'s elementary school IEP during L.J.'s seventh- and eighth-grade school years was adequate according to the IDEA.25
A. Life Before IDEA
Before enacting the IDEA in 1975, Congress passed multiple laws to address how the public education system should or would provide services to intellectually disabled students.26 Then, in 1965, Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act27 and the State
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Schools Act.28 Both provided states with grant assistance to help schools educate children with disabilities; however, neither provided direct federal funding for these special education services.
Years later, two lower court decisions proposed that children with disabilities deserve an equal education compared to their typically developing counterparts. The first was Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Pennsylvania.29 The plaintiffs (PARC) sued on behalf of all intellectually disabled students "who [had] been denied access to a free, public program of education and training" across Pennsylvania school districts.30 According to PARC, the Pennsylvania school districts failed to provide a free public education to all intellectually disabled children.31 Both parties entered into a consent agreement that gave all intellectually disabled students the right to free educational programs and training.32
The other lower court case that addressed the education of children with intellectual disabilities was Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia.33 Here, a civil action group sought a declaration and an injunction on behalf of seven children to stop the District of Columbia Public Schools from denying children with intellectual disabilities a public education.34 The court quoted Brown v. Board of Education35 to emphasize the importance of an education.36 The court emphasized the following statement from Brown: "Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide [education], is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms."37 The court also pointed out that the Supreme Court of the United States had found that the
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denial of a public education is an "arbitrary deprivation of [students'] liberty in violation of the Due Process Clause [of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States]."38 As such, the court found that the Constitution of the United States required the District of Columbia School Board to provide a free public education to children with intellectual disabilities.39 Both of these cases exhibited a trend in protecting the right to education for children with disabilities.
B. The Birth of the IDEA and How It Works Today
From PARC and Mills's reasoning came the IDEA.40 After these cases, Congress analyzed the education of children with disabilities across the United States. After this Congressional investigation, Congress enacted Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.41 Congress included findings in the Act, which included that in 1975 there were more than "eight million handicapped children in the United States . . ."42 Congress further found that the educational needs of these eight million children were not being appropriately met, showing that "more than half of the handicapped children . . . do not receive appropriate educational services which would enable them to have full equality of opportunity[.]"43 Even more, at least one million of these children with disabilities were completely excluded from the public-school system.44 Congress further found that detecting disabilities in schoolchildren and the training provided to educators was ineffective.45
Today, the Act, known as IDEA, provides that "[d]isability is a natural part of the human experience and in no way diminishes the right of individuals to participate in or contribute to society."46 Two of
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the Act's main purposes are to ensure children with disabilities have the right to a FAPE and to protect this right.47 To protect the right to a FAPE, the IDEA creates procedural safeguards including the right for students and parents to file a complaint against the school challenging "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[.]"48 There are two questions in the current case: What is a FAPE is and how should schools implement a FAPE?49
According to the Act, a FAPE is:
[S]pecial education and related services that—(A) have been provided at the public expense, under public supervision and direction, and without charge; (B) meet the standards of the State educational agency; (C) include an...
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