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

338 F.3d 325

R.R. by and through his father, Mr. R., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. FAIRFAX COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD, Defendant-Appellant, and Fairfax County Public Schools; Virginia Board of Education; Virginia Department of Education, Defendants.

No. 02-2235.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: June 3, 2003.

Decided: July 29, 2003.

ARGUED:

Sona Rewari, HUNTON & WILLIAMS, McLean, Virginia, for Appellant.

Melanie Diana Coates, WILMER, CUTLER & PICKERING, McLean, Virginia, for Appellee.

ON BRIEF:

Thomas J. Cawley, HUNTON & WILLIAMS, McLean, Virginia; John F. Cafferky, BLANKINGSHIP & KEITH, Fairfax, Virginia, for Appellant.

David P. Donovan, WILMER, CUTLER & PICKERING, McLean, Virginia, for Appellee.

Before WILKINS, Chief Judge, and WILLIAMS and GREGORY, Circuit Judges.

Reversed and remanded with instructions by published opinion. Judge WILLIAMS wrote the opinion, in which chief Judge WILKINS and Judge GREGORY joined.

OPINION

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge:

This case presents the issue of whether the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires an educational agency to include in its procedural safeguards notice, mandated by 20 U.S.C.A. § 1415 (West 2000), an explicit statement that parents in Virginia have a two-year period in which to request a due process hearing and to indicate when that period begins to run. Because we find that requirement neither explicit in the IDEA or its implementing regulations, nor required by the policy and spirit of the IDEA, we reverse the district court and remand with instructions to dismiss.

I.

R.R. is an eight-year-old child who lives in Fairfax County, Virginia, and has been diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder.¹ On October 9, 1997, Fairfax County Public School Board (Fairfax County) found R.R. eligible for special education services. From November 4, 1997, through the end of the school year in 1998, R.R. attended a class-based, non-categorical program² for autistic children at Greenbriar East Elementary School.

In June 1998, Fairfax County proposed an individualized education program (IEP) for R.R. that continued the class-based, non-categorical program, adding only limited supplemental speech, language, and occupational instruction. Mr. R., R.R.'s father, was not satisfied with the IEP and requested that Fairfax County provide R.R. with intensive one-to-one Applied Behavioral Analysis training, an alternative educational method for autistic children. Fairfax County refused to incorporate Mr. R.'s educational ideas and, by letter dated July 29, 1998, Mr. R. rejected the proposed IEP. On July 30, 1998, Fairfax County responded, explaining why it had refused Mr. R.'s request for accommodation, and provided Mr. R. with a notice of his right to appeal its decision, by requesting a due process hearing or an administrative appeal, along with a pamphlet outlining the procedural remedies available to parents who disagree with IEP decisions under the IDEA. Although the letter went into detail about Mr. R.'s procedural rights, neither it nor the enclosed pamphlet informed Mr. R. of any limitations period that might be applied to Mr. R.'s right to request a due process hearing or when that limitations period would begin.

By letter dated August 7, 1998, Mr. R. withdrew R.R. from the Fairfax County public schools because Fairfax County refused to agree to his proposals. Mr. R. further informed Fairfax County that he would "continue to pursue all appropriate and legal means at [his] disposal to seek the compliance of [Fairfax County] with the law with respect to [his] son's education." (J.A. at 55.) On August 28, 1998 Fairfax County replied to Mr. R.'s letter, reminding him that he had "the right to appeal the contents of the IEP either through an administrative review or an impartial due process hearing" and enclosing a second copy of the procedural safeguards required by the IDEA. (J.A. at 56.) This letter also did not notify Mr. R. of any applicable limitations period. Mr. R. did not immediately request a due process hearing or an administrative review but simply enrolled R.R. in a private school program for autistic children, paying for it himself.

On January 29, 2001, over twenty-nine months after Mr. R. rejected Fairfax County's proposed IEP and removed R.R. from the Fairfax County public schools, Mr. R. filed a request for a due process hearing, requesting reimbursement for R.R.'s private tuition expenses. Fairfax County moved to dismiss Mr. R.'s request as time-barred under Virginia's two-year limitations period, Va.Code Ann. § 8.01-248 (Michie 2000), and under the doctrine of laches. Mr. R., in response, argued that Fairfax County could not rely on the two-year limitations period because Fairfax County failed to notify Mr. R. of the limitations period and, alternatively, that Mr. R.'s claim did not accrue until the summer of 1999 when Mr. R. actually paid for R.R.'s private educational expenses. The administrative hearing officer agreed with Fairfax County, holding that Fairfax County had provided Mr. R. with a full explanation of his procedural rights under the IDEA and that Fairfax County was not required under the IDEA to notify Mr. R. of the limitations period applicable to due process hearings. The hearing officer further held that Mr. R.'s claim accrued by August of 1998, because that is when Mr. R. had knowledge of the events that formed the basis of his claim, and thus that Mr. R.'s request for a due process hearing was time-barred under Virginia's two-year limitations period.

On January 25, 2002, Mr. R. filed a two-count complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia challenging the hearing officer's decision, arguing that his claims for tuition reimbursement were not time-barred because Fairfax County failed to notify him of the applicable limitations period (Count I), and that his claims were not time-barred because they did not accrue until he had fully paid the private educational costs (Count II).

On October 11, 2002, the district court granted summary judgment to Mr. R., reversing the hearing officer on Count I, and holding that the limitations period was equitably tolled by Fairfax County's failure to provide notice of the two-year limitations period pursuant to the IDEA's implicit requirement that educational agencies give notice of all applicable limitations periods. R.R. ex rel. Mr. R. v. Fairfax County School Bd., 226 F.Supp.2d 804, 808 (E.D.Va.2002). Given its disposition of Count I, the district court found Count II to be moot. Id. at 810 n. 6. Fairfax County timely noted its appeal.

II.

Fairfax County contends that the district court erred because (1) the text of the IDEA does not mandate that educational agencies give notice of the limitations period for requesting a due process hearing or its accrual date; and (2) the Fourth Circuit has already held that the IDEA does not require educational agencies to provide notice of the applicable limitations period when that time frame is longer than four months. R.R. responds that the district court correctly held that the IDEA implicitly requires notice to ensure that parents have a meaningful opportunity to be heard.

It is important to note that the IDEA itself contains no limitations period for requesting due process hearings.³ At the time the IDEA was enacted, if a federal statute created a cause of action but provided no limitations period, "the general rule [wa]s that a state limitations period for an analogous cause of action is borrowed and applied to the federal claim, provided that the application of the state statute would not be inconsistent with underlying federal policies." County of Oneida v. Oneida Indian Nation, 470 U.S. 226, 240, 105 S.Ct. 1245, 84 L.Ed.2d 169 (1985). In Schimmel ex rel. Schimmel v. Spillane, 819 F.2d 477, 482-83 (4th Cir. 1987), we analyzed analogous limitations periods in Virginia and held that the then one-year limitations period in Va.Code § 8.01-248 was consistent with IDEA policies and that it applied in the context of civil actions filed by parties aggrieved by due process hearing decisions. We later held in Manning ex rel. Manning v. Fairfax County Sch. Bd., 176 F.3d 235, 238-39 (4th Cir.1999), that the same one-year limitations period was consistent with IDEA policies in the context of requests for due process hearings.⁴ While we have decided the question of which limitations period to apply, we recognized in C.M. ex rel. EM v. Bd. of Ed. of Henderson County, 241 F.3d 374 (4th Cir.2001), that we had not decided the issue presented in this case: Whether the IDEA "requires educational agencies to inform parents of the applicable limitations period," id. at 382 n. 4. In this case, the district court resolved that issue in the affirmative.

We review a district court's grant of summary judgment de novo. Gadsby ex rel. Gadsby v. Grasmick, 109 F.3d 940, 949 (4th Cir.1997). Summary judgment should be granted if, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, there is no genuine issue of material fact, and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Fed. R.Civ.P. 56(c); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 247-52, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). The facts in this case are not in dispute. Thus, the sole legal issue is whether the IDEA and its implementing regulations require educational agencies in Virginia to provide notice of the limitations period applicable to requests for a due process hearing. As explained below, we believe that the district court erred in concluding that it does.

A.

To determine whether the IDEA or its implementing regulations require that notice be given of a limitations period applicable to a due process hearing, we begin, as we must, with the text. United States v. Ron Pair Enters. Inc., 489 U.S. 235, 240, 109 S.Ct. 1026, 103 L.Ed.2d 290 (1989) ("[When] the statute's language is plain,...