R.R. ex rel. Mr. R. v. Fairfax County School Bd.

Page 804

226 F.Supp.2d 804

R.R. by and through his father, MR. R., Plaintiffs, v. FAIRFAX COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD, et. al., Defendants.

No. CIV.A. 02-124-A.

United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Alexandria Division.

October 11, 2002.

Melanie D. Coates, Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, Tysons Corner, VA, for plaintiffs.

Thomas J. Cawley, Hunton & Williams, McLean, VA, Joan W. Murphy, Office of Atty. Gen., Richmond, VA, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

BRINKEMA, District Judge.

Plaintiff R.R. is a learning-disabled minor child who has brought this action, by and through his father, plaintiff Mr. R., against the Fairfax County School Board, the Fairfax County Public Schools ("FCPS"), the Virginia Board of Education, and the Virginia Department of Education,¹ seeking relief under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act ("IDEA"), 20 U.S.C. § 1400, et. seq. (1999), from the dismissal of their request for a due process hearing. Specifically, plaintiffs seek a declaration that an adequate procedural safeguard notice under the IDEA must include notice of the time period in which the parents may request a due process hearing (Count I) and a declaration that their request for a due process hearing was timely made (Count II).

On June 14, 2002, after hearing oral argument of the parties' cross motions for summary judgment, we found in favor of plaintiffs on their first cause of action. This opinion more fully articulates the reasons for that conclusion.

I. FACTUAL FINDINGS

R.R. is a seven-year-old boy with autistic spectrum disorder. The FCPS first found R.R. eligible for special education services on October 9, 1997, and enrolled him in special education classes on November 4, 1997. R.R.'s specific program was "non-categorical," meaning that his classmates were children with various types of disabilities. After becoming dissatisfied with R.R.'s progress at his elementary school, Mr. R. began supplementing R.R.'s preschool program in February 1998, at his own expense, with one-on-one instruction through the Center for Autism and Related Disorders. R.R. continued in the FCPS program through the end of the 1997-1998 school year.

In June 1998, FCPS proposed an individualized education program ("IEP") for R.R.'s 1998-1999 school year. Mr. R. disagreed with the IEP because it essentially continued the same classroom-based, non-categorical program from the year before and offered only limited supplemental speech, language, and occupational instruction. He requested instead that the FCPS provide R.R. with intensive one-on-one training and other accommodations similar to the supplemental education R.R. had been receiving at the Center for Autism and Related Disorders. After the FCPS denied Mr. R.'s request for accommodation, he rejected the 1998 IEP by letter dated June 29, 1998.²

The FCPS responded to Mr. R.'s rejection of the 1998 IEP in a letter dated July 30, 1998. In that letter, Mr. R. was given the following notice of his right to appeal the FCPS's decision:

You have the right to appeal the contents of the IEP. In order to appeal the IEP, you must notify Mary Shaughnessy, coordinator, Monitoring and Compliance, 10310 Layrton [sic] Hall Drive, Fairfax, VA, in writing, that you are initiating either an administrative review or an impartial due process hearing. The purpose of an administrative review is to mediate disagreements prior to initiation of the formal appeal procedure and is voluntary. In the meantime, placement in the special education program will continue as per your previously signed permission. A copy of Procedural Safeguard and Parental Rights Pertaining to Special Education [sic] is enclosed for your information.

Joint R. of Administrative Proceedings B, Ex. 1. Nowhere in the FCPS's letter, nor in the copy of the Procedural Safeguards and Parental Rights Pertaining to Special Education, see id. at H, Ex. 4 ("Procedural Safeguards"), was Mr. R. informed either of Virginia's two-year statute of limitations for requesting a due process hearing or of the time when the statute of limitations would begin to run.

By letter dated August 7, 1998, Mr. R. withdrew R.R. from the FCPS and advised that he intended to challenge the FCPS's decision regarding the 1998 IEP.³ On August 28, 1998, the FCPS replied to Mr. R.'s letter by enclosing a second copy of the Procedural Safeguards and reminding him that:

[A]s you are aware, you also have the right to appeal the contents of the IEP either through an administrative review or an impartial due process hearing. To do this, you must notify Mary Shaughnessy, coordinator, Monitoring and Compliance, 10310 Layton Hall Drive, Fairfax, VA, in writing.

Id. at B, Ex. 3. It is undisputed that this second notice failed to inform Mr. R. either of Virginia's two-year statute of limitations for requesting a due process hearing or of the time when the statute of limitations would begin to run. Mr. R. withdrew R.R. from the FCPS and enrolled him in a private school program, for which Mr. R. has been paying tuition.

On January 29, 2001, more than two years after the above exchange of letters, Mr. R. requested an impartial due process hearing before a local hearing officer, to determine whether Mr. R. was entitled to reimbursement for R.R.'s tuition expenses. Shortly after the hearing was scheduled, the FCPS filed a Motion to Dismiss the due process proceeding, arguing that it was time-barred by Virginia's two-year statute of limitations. Plaintiffs opposed the Motion to Dismiss, arguing that the FCPS had never given them notice of either the two-year statute of limitations or the time from which the statute began to run. As a secondary argument, plaintiffs claimed that the two-year statute began to run from the date when Mr. R. fully paid R.R.'s 1998-1999 private school bill, and not from either the date when Mr. R. rejected the 1998 IEP or from the date when he withdrew R.R. from the FCPS.

On February 23, 2001, the local hearing officer granted the FCPS's Motion to Dismiss, finding that the plaintiffs had filed their request for the hearing outside the two-year statute of limitations. The officer also found that the FCPS was not required under either the IDEA or Fourth Circuit law to provide notice of the applicable statute of limitations. Lastly, he concluded that the statute of limitations began to run from either the date when Mr. R. rejected the IEP or the date when Mr. R. withdrew R.R. from the FCPS, because the injury or event forming the basis of the claim occurred upon those dates.

On January 25, 2002, plaintiffs timely filed a two-count complaint in this court, seeking declarations that an adequate procedural safeguard notice under the IDEA must include notice of the time period within which the parents may request a due process hearing and that plaintiffs' request for a due process hearing was timely.

II. DISCUSSION

Summary judgment is appropriate where the record reveals no genuine issue as to any material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). The Fourth Circuit has observed that actions under the IDEA "should typically be disposed of by motions for [summary] judgment." Kirkpatrick v. Lenoir County Bd. of Educ., 216 F.3d 380, 385 n. 4 (4th Cir. 2000). Because the facts in the instant matter are undisputed, the purely legal issues presented are especially appropriate for resolution on summary judgment.

The purpose of the IDEA is "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 employment and independent living." 20 U.S.C. § 1400(d)(1)(A). This goal is attained by gathering the parents, teachers, and local school officials together to create a written plan for the student's special education needs and goals, as well as to determine the procedures by which these goals will be met. This plan, known as an individualized education program ("IEP"), is reviewed annually and revised when appropriate. 20 U.S.C. § 1401(11), § 1414(d)(4). When parents disagree with educational agencies about their child's IEP, the IDEA provides a mechanism through which they may seek a "due process" hearing before a local hearing officer and, if still aggrieved, file an original action contesting the result of the due process hearing in a federal court. See 20 U.S.C. §§ 1415(f)-(i). To ensure that children with disabilities and their parents are guaranteed procedural safeguards such as those discussed above, the IDEA requires state and local educational agencies to provide parents with "a full explanation" of the procedural safeguards available under the IDEA. 20 U.S.C. § 1415(d)(2)(J). The issue squarely before us is whether a "full explanation" of procedural safeguards includes notice of the limitations period for initiating a due process hearing. We hold that it does.

The IDEA itself does not prescribe a particular statute of limitations; rather, it borrows the statute of limitations from state law. Manning v. Fairfax County Sch. Bd., 176 F.3d 235, 237-38 (4th Cir. 1999). As a result, from state to state, courts evaluating claims under the IDEA have applied statutes of limitations that range from as short as thirty days to as long as six years. See, e.g., Cory D. v. Burke County Sch. Dist., 285 F.3d 1294 (11th Cir.2002) (applying Georgia's thirty-day statute of limitations for administrative actions to appeals under the IDEA); Birmingham v. Omaha Sch. Dist., 220 F.3d 850, 856 (8th Cir.2000) (applying Arkansas' three-year statute of limitations for general personal injury claims to causes of action under the IDEA); Murphy v. Timberlane Reg'l Sch. Dist., 22 F.3d 1186, 1194 (1st Cir.1994) (borrowing New Hampshire's catch-all six-year statute of limitations to evaluate the timeliness of IDEA claims); Patricia N. v. Lemahieu, 141 F.Supp.2d 1243, 1250 (D.Haw.2001) ...