The United States Supreme Court announces certain disability discrimination claims can bypass administrative hearings

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“Fine Tuning” Episode 9 (Now with Practice Pointers!)

By John Ptacin, Sedor, Wendlandt, Evans & Filippi, LLC

On March 21, 2023, the United States Supreme Court unanimously held in Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools that a student with a disability does not have to exhaust Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) procedures before filing a lawsuit if they are seeking compensatory damages under separate laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Court’s decision in Perez departs from prior case law. Before this case, students and parents could not go directly to court for compensatory damages unless they submitted to the Alaska’s IDEA hearing process first.

Notably, the new holding will not apply in cases where a student seeks a remedy traditionally available under the IDEA. For example, Perez’s parents sought reimbursement for his tuition at the Michigan School for the Deaf. This would still only be available through the IDEA administrative process.  

In the future, parents will be faced with deciding between starting their cases in court, where they might obtain monetary damages, and exhausting the IDEA administrative process, where they can seek compensatory education, reimbursement for enrollment in private schools, reimbursement for private evaluations, or a directive for a district to institute corrective action.   

Practice Pointers

If you have questions about Alaska’s IDEA hearing process—which is run by Alaska’s Department of Education and Early Development—please feel free to give us a call.   

  • Continue to follow the procedures of the IDEA.
  • Continue to review the substantive appropriateness of IEPs to avoid litigation or administrative processes.
  • Review and, as appropriate, address any concerns regarding access to, or benefit from, educational opportunities.
  • Remind staff that IDEA issues also implicate sections of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
  • Your District should always be timely and prompt when addressing allegations of disability-based discrimination.
  • If you receive an ADA or IDEA related lawsuit, please contact your legal counsel. If the claimant is seeking IDEA remedies before exhausting IDEA hearings processes, your District may be entitled to a dismissal of the lawsuit.

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