J.S. v. N.Y. State Dep't of Corr. & Cmty. Supervision

76 F.4th 32

J.S., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND COMMUNITY SUPERVISION, Defendant-Appellee.

Docket No. 21-2447

August Term, 2022

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit

Argued: December 7, 2022

Decided: August 3, 2023

Julie M. Keegan (Benjamin Taylor, on the brief), Disability Rights New York, Rensselaer, NY (Andrew Stecker & Maria E. Pagano, Prisoners' Legal Services New York, Buffalo, NY, on the brief), for Plaintiff-Appellant J.S.

Kevin Hu (Barbara D. Underwood, Victor Paladino, Jennifer L. Clark, on the brief), for Letitia James, Attorney General for the State of New York, Albany, NY, for Defendant-Appellee New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

Ellen Saideman, Law Office of Ellen Saideman, Barrington, RI, for Amici Curiae Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates; National Disability Rights Network; Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund; Disability Law Project, Vermont; Disability Rights Connecticut.

Before: Cabranes, Carney, and Robinson, Circuit Judges.

Carney, Circuit Judge:

The fee-shifting provision of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ("IDEA") permits a court, in its discretion, to award reasonable attorneys' fees and related costs to "a prevailing party who is the parent of a child with a disability." 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(3)(B)(i)(I). The IDEA defines "parent" broadly to include, inter alia, foster parents, guardians, individuals "acting in the place of a natural or adoptive parent . . . with whom the child lives," and, even more generally, "individual[s] who [are] legally responsible for the child's welfare." Id. § 1401(23). It guarantees a "free appropriate public education" ("FAPE") for children with disabilities "between the ages of 3 and 21, inclusive," id. § 1412(a)(1)(A), and provides "parent[s]," as statutorily defined, certain procedural safeguards to enforce this important substantive right, id. §§ 1412(a)(6), 1415. See also Winkelman ex rel. Winkelman v. Parma City Sch. Dist., 550 U.S. 516, 531, 127 S.Ct. 1994, 167 L.Ed.2d 904 (2007) (explaining that the "IDEA, through its text and structure, creates in parents an independent stake" in the IDEA's procedural and substantive guarantees, and thus "conclud[ing] that [the] IDEA does not differentiate, through isolated references to various procedures and remedies, between the rights accorded to children and the rights accorded to parents").

In August 2016, Plaintiff-Appellant J.S.—then incarcerated and 20 years old—successfully brought an administrative proceeding against Defendant-Appellee New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision ("DOCCS"), alleging that DOCCS denied him a FAPE in violation of the IDEA. When DOCCS refused to pay J.S.'s attorneys' fees and costs, J.S. filed this action, seeking to recover $71,542.00 in fees and $988.72 in costs. Adopting in full the report and recommendation of the magistrate judge, the district court dismissed J.S.'s complaint for failure to state a claim, reasoning that J.S., as the child with a disability, was not a "parent" and not entitled to recover under the IDEA's fee-shifting provision. See J.S. v. N.Y. State Dep't of Corr. & Cmty. Supervision, 557 F. Supp. 3d 403, 405 (W.D.N.Y. 2021). J.S. now challenges that ruling.

On de novo review, we conclude that the IDEA permits a court to award fees and costs to J.S. as "an individual who is legally responsible for the child's welfare" because, as a "child with a disability" under age 22 and without representation by a guardian, natural parent, or appointed individual, he prevailed in his action on his own behalf seeking required educational services from DOCCS. 20 U.S.C. §§ 1401(23), 1412(a)(1)(A). Accordingly, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court denying him an award of fees, and we remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

BACKGROUND

I. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

The IDEA, first enacted in 1975 as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, Pub. L. No. 94-142, 89 Stat. 773, establishes a program under which the federal government provides funds to states to assist in their efforts to educate children with disabilities. See 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq. In this exercise of its Spending Clause authority, U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1, Congress required that recipient entities make a "free appropriate public education"—a FAPE, in the IDEA's parlance—available to children with disabilities beginning when such children reach the age of 3 and continuing until they reach the age of 22. 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(1). With regard to children with disabilities and their parents, Congress described the IDEA's purposes as follows:

(A) to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living;

(B) to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities and parents of such children are protected.

Id. § 1400(d)(1)(A)-(B). Fundamental to the IDEA's operation, a qualifying child must be educated in accordance with an individualized education program ("IEP") that meets certain statutory standards and is specially designed to provide the child a FAPE. Id. §§ 1401(9), 1412(a)(4); see also id. §§ 1401(14), 1414(d) (defining IEP).

When the adequacy of an IEP is subject to dispute, the IDEA provides procedural recourse. See, e.g., id. § 1415(b)(5)-(8). An objecting parent may, for example, present a complaint and request what the statute refers to as an "impartial due process hearing" on that complaint, to be conducted by the local or state educational agency, which is charged with determining "whether the child received a free appropriate public education." Id. § 1415(b)(6), (f)(1)(A), (f)(3)(E). The decision of a hearing officer reviewing the due process complaint is "final," but if the decision is rendered by a local educational agency, "any party aggrieved" may appeal to the state educational agency, which then must conduct its own impartial review of the findings and decision and make an independent decision. Id. § 1415(g)(1), (i)(1)(A). An "aggrieved" party who has exhausted its administrative remedies along the avenue just described may then bring a civil action to enforce its rights. Id. § 1415(i)(2)(A). Suggestive of the breadth of the federal interest in such actions as conceived by Congress, the IDEA allows a party to proceed on such an action in federal district court "without regard to the amount in controversy." Id.; see also id. § 1415(i)(3)(A). And protective of the rights that it confers and the remedies that it affords, the IDEA allows the district court in any such action, in its discretion, to "award reasonable attorneys' fees as part of the costs . . . to a prevailing party who is the parent of a child with a disability." Id. § 1415(i)(3)(B)(i)(I).¹

The IDEA defines "parent" broadly to encompass not just those individuals who are legally recognized as the child's parents under state law; rather, for IDEA purposes, a "parent" is:

(A) a natural, adoptive, or foster parent of a child (unless a foster parent is prohibited by State law from serving as a parent);

(B) a guardian (but not the State if the child is a ward of the State);

(C) an individual acting in the place of a natural or adoptive parent (including a grandparent, stepparent, or other relative) with whom the child lives, or an individual who is legally responsible for the child's welfare; or

(D) except as used in sections 1415(b)(2) and 1439(a)(5) of this title,[²] an individual assigned under either of those sections to be a surrogate parent.

Id. § 1401(23).

II. Factual & Procedural Background³

The relevant facts are not disputed.

J.S. was born in January 1996. When he was approximately five to six years of age, he was identified in the State of New York as a child with a learning disability.⁴ Accordingly, he began to receive a special education in compliance with the IDEA. His special education continued through his elementary, middle school, and high school years.

In 2013, at age 17, J.S. was convicted of a state crime. He was then incarcerated and placed in the custody of DOCCS. As a New York State agency, DOCCS is bound to comply with the IDEA.⁵ As noted above, the statute requires state entities to provide a FAPE to eligible individuals until the individual reaches the age of 22. During J.S.'s roughly three years of incarceration, however—that is, between December 27, 2013, and November 23, 2016—DOCCS did not provide J.S. the requisite special education.

In August 2016, J.S., who was by then 20 years old and acting on his own behalf, initiated an administrative proceeding against DOCCS, alleging that he had been unlawfully denied a FAPE. DOCCS resisted, citing various statutory and factual grounds for its actions. In March 2017, after a two-day hearing, the impartial hearing officer issued a 54-page decision and order largely agreeing with J.S. The hearing officer concluded, among other things, that DOCCS had committed several "gross violations" of the statute. See J. App'x 59-62. He explained that, despite J.S.'s requests, DOCCS provided J.S. "education in line with general education curriculum standards for inmates under 21 without a known history of special education or verified disability classification," although it had sufficient information to believe that J.S. was a child with a disability and had mental health and behavioral issues affecting his ability to learn. J. App'x 23, 60-61. For J.S., this general education was inadequate and violated the IDEA. The hearing officer's resulting order directed DOCCS to institute a wide array of remedies, including specific, forward-looking educational measures for J.S. For example, he ordered DOCCS to provide 540 modules—about three school years' worth—of 45-minute specialized math...