Sanchez v. Arlington Cnty. Sch. Bd.

58 F.4th 130

Jemie SANCHEZ, Plaintiff - Appellant,

v.ARLINGTON COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD, Defendant - Appellee.

No. 21-2245

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: October 26, 2022

Decided: January 18, 2023

ARGUED: Douglas William Tyrka, TYRKA & ASSOCIATES, LLC, McLean, Virginia, for Appellant. John F. Cafferky, BLANKINGSHIP & KEITH, P.C., Fairfax, Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Emily K. Haslebacher, BLANKINGSHIP & KEITH, P.C., Fairfax, Virginia, for Appellee.

Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, and HARRIS and QUATTLEBAUM, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Harris wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge Gregory and Judge Quattlebaum joined.

PAMELA HARRIS, Circuit Judge:

Jemie Sanchez, the mother of a minor child with special needs, brings this action for attorney's fees under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ("IDEA"), 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq. The IDEA allows parents who prevail in state administrative proceedings challenging their children's individualized education programs to recover attorney's fees in federal court. Id. § 1415(i)(3). But Sanchez did not file her claim for fees until almost two years after her administrative hearing, and the district court dismissed her case as untimely.

The IDEA contains no express statute of limitations for attorney's fees actions, so courts must "borrow" an appropriate limitations period from state law. The district court concluded that a standalone fees action like Sanchez's is most comparable to an IDEA claim for substantive judicial review of an adverse administrative determination. And because Virginia, where Sanchez lives, sets a 180-day limitations period for such substantive IDEA claims, the court deemed her claim time-barred. We agree and affirm the district court's dismissal.

I.

A.

We begin with a brief overview of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ("IDEA"), 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq. This appeal turns on a pure issue of law – the limitations period applicable to IDEA attorney's fees actions – so an outline of the relevant statutory provisions will help guide the discussion that follows.

The IDEA requires public schools to provide tailored special education services to children with learning disabilities. The statute's "cooperative federalism" model gives states "the primary responsibility for developing and executing" its mandates, but "imposes significant requirements to be followed in the discharge of that responsibility." Schaffer ex rel. Schaffer v. Weast , 546 U.S. 49, 52, 126 S.Ct. 528, 163 L.Ed.2d 387 (2005) (internal quotation marks omitted).

The IDEA's core goal is what the statute terms a "free appropriate public education" for every child. To achieve this goal, schools must work with parents to develop an individualized education program, or "IEP," for each student with special needs. The IEP aims to "set forth measurable annual achievement goals, describe the services to be provided, and establish objective criteria for evaluating the child's progress." MM ex rel. DM v. Sch. Dist. of Greenville Cnty. , 303 F.3d 523, 527 (4th Cir. 2002) ; see 20 U.S.C. § 1414(d)(1)(A).

States must afford parents certain procedures to challenge IEPs they believe are deficient. See 20 U.S.C. § 1415. A parent may present complaints to the school and, if unsatisfied, request a "due process" hearing in a state administrative forum. Id. § 1415(b)(6), (f)(1)(A). There, an impartial hearing officer determines "whether the child received a free appropriate public education" and orders appropriate relief as necessary. Id. § 1415(f)(3)(E)(i).

A parent or school district "aggrieved by the findings and decision" of the hearing officer may then bring a civil action in either state or federal court. Id. § 1415(i)(2)(A). By default, the IDEA allows parties 90 days from the date of the hearing officer's decision to seek judicial review. Id. § 1415(i)(2)(B). But it also permits states to set different limitations periods if they so choose; relevant here, Virginia provides 180 days to commence a civil action. Va. Code § 22.1-214(D).

Finally, parties who prevail after either administrative or judicial review may recover reasonable attorney's fees. 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(3)(B). As in most contexts, a party who prevails in a civil action may simply file a fees motion in her open case. One who prevails at the state administrative level, however, has no need to seek judicial review of the merits and cannot initiate a civil action as an "aggrieved" party. Instead, these parties may "bring an independent action in federal court solely to recover fees incurred in [that] administrative proceeding." Combs by Combs v. Sch. Bd. of Rockingham Cnty. , 15 F.3d 357, 360 n.10 (4th Cir. 1994). But neither the IDEA nor Virginia's implementing law provides an express statute of limitations for these standalone fees actions. It is this missing limitations period that gives rise to the dispute before us.

B.

C.S. is a minor child with special needs who attends the Arlington Public Schools ("APS") in Virginia. In March 2018, APS and C.S.'s mother, Jemie Sanchez, developed an IEP for C.S. But the next fall, Sanchez became concerned that C.S. was not making progress in school, and that APS was not providing the special education services required under C.S.'s IEP. Sanchez then retained counsel and requested an IDEA due process hearing pursuant to Virginia's administrative procedures. See 8 VAC 20-81-210.

On November 9, 2018, an administrative hearing officer issued a decision in C.S.'s case. Regarding C.S.'s IEP itself, the hearing officer found that APS and Sanchez had "agreed to a document that is defective ... on its face." J.A. 25. In particular, the IEP 4 contained a number of mathematical errors, as the number of weekly hours allotted to each subject area did not add up to the listed totals. Moreover, the IEP did not appear to track the "actual schedule that C.S. follows on a daily and weekly basis." Id.

Nonetheless, the hearing officer rejected Sanchez's claim that C.S. was not making educational progress, noting that C.S. was doing well in his coursework and "making very good progress on social integration with non-disabled peers." Id. The hearing officer concluded that any additional time in an "isolated special education setting" would "deprive [C.S.] of the benefit he receives from interaction with non-disabled peers." Id. Based on these findings, the hearing officer ordered APS to revise C.S.'s IEP but declined to award the compensatory educational services requested by Sanchez.

Four months later, Sanchez's counsel contacted APS to request reimbursement for attorney's fees related to C.S.'s due process hearing. See 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(3)(B). APS, however, disputed that Sanchez had actually "prevailed" at the hearing, and so denied that it had any fee-shifting obligation under the IDEA. By August 2019, after several months of sporadic email correspondence, the parties were at an impasse.

The matter apparently lay dormant for more than a year. Then, on November 6, 2020 – just under two years after the hearing officer's decision – Sanchez filed this action for attorney's fees in federal district court. Defendant Arlington County School Board (the "Board"), which operates APS, moved to dismiss the action as untimely under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).

The district court granted the Board's motion. In its thorough and well-reasoned opinion, the court acknowledged that the IDEA does not set a limitations period for fees actions, and that the Fourth Circuit had not yet addressed the issue. It thus began with our "instruction that when federal law does not supply a limitations period a court must ‘borrow the state statute of limitations that applies to the most analogous state-law claim.’ " Sanchez v. Arlington Cnty. Sch. Bd. , 563 F. Supp. 3d 484, 487 (E.D. Va. 2021) (quoting A Soc'y Without A Name v. Virginia , 655 F.3d 342, 347 (4th Cir. 2011) ).

The court weighed two competing options in conducting its borrowing analysis. On the one hand, though Virginia does not set a limitations period for a prevailing party to seek fees under the IDEA, it does set a 180-day time limit for an aggrieved party to seek substantive judicial review. See Va. Code § 22.1-214(D). And the Board contended that, like a substantive action, a fees claim is "tied to the administrative proceeding itself, making the same limitations period most appropriate to apply." J.A. 16. On the other hand, the court considered Virginia's catch-all, two-year statute of limitations for any "action wherein a judgment for money is sought." Va. Code §§ 8.01-228, 8.01-248. According to Sanchez, "[t]his case is an independent action in federal court solely to recover fees, and so is perfectly analogous." J.A. 37 (internal quotation marks omitted). Because Sanchez filed her fees action just under two years after her due process hearing decision, the choice of limitations period was outcome determinative.

As the district court recognized, this precise question has divided the federal courts of appeals: Most courts to consider the issue apply the shorter limitations periods governing IDEA merits actions, while a minority borrows from longer, more general catch-all statutes of limitations. Sanchez , 563 F. Supp. 3d at 487–89. As the district court observed, "[i]t is not difficult to see the reason for this divergence," as "an action for attorneys' fees presents a unique problem in that it may arguably be characterized as either an independent cause of action ... or as ancillary to the judicial review of the administrative decision." Id. at 487–88 (quoting Powers v. Ind. Dep't of Educ., Div. of Special Educ. , 61 F.3d 552, 555 (7th Cir. 1995) ).

After surveying the precedent, the court adopted the majority viewpoint. It noted that IDEA fees actions, unlike general actions to recover on a debt, "do not come before a court on a clean judicial slate." Id. at 490. Rather, fees claims are "closely related to underlying...