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By Rasheed Nader

On March 22, 2017, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Endrew v. Douglas County School Dist. RE-1.[1] Endrew marks a strong victory for advocates of disability rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”).[2]

The IDEA offers states federal funds to assist disabled children’s education in exchange for those states’ pledge to comply with the IDEA’s statutory scheme.[3] As a consequence, a state that accepts such funds must provide a “free appropriate public education” (“FAPE”) to disabled children.[4] Under the IDEA, a FAPE includes both “special education”[5] and “related services.”[6] Moreover, any “[s]tate covered by the IDEA must provide a disabled child with such special education and related services ‘in conformity with the child’s individualized education program,’ or IEP.”[7] An IEP is a plan created by a group consisting of a child’s teachers, school officials, and parents who provide a set of procedures for that child.[8] These procedures are the means “by which special education and related services are ‘tailored to the unique needs’ of [the] child.”[9] Finally, an IEP must describe the special education and related services that will be rendered “so that the child may ‘may advance appropriately toward attaining the annual goals’ and, when possible, ‘be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum.’”[10]

The Supreme Court has previously addressed the FAPE requirement in Rowley.[11] There, the school district offered a first-grader with a hearing impairment an IEP that would provide a special tutor and speech therapist.[12] The parents, however, disagreed with the IEP reasoning that the school district should go further and provide a sign-language interpreter as well.[13] The school denied these additions to the IEP, and the parents filed suit because refusal to furnish an interpreter denied the child a FAPE.[14] The Court, in reversing the Second Circuit’s decision, held that the IDEA requires a “substantively adequate program of education.”[15] More so, a child required an IEP that was “reasonably calculated to enable the child to achieve passing marks and advance from grade to grade.”[16] In making this ruling, however, the Court did not expressly establish a test for determining the adequacy of a qualifying child’s educational benefits.[17]

The Supreme Court finally answered this question this year in Endrew. Endrew was a child diagnosed with autism.[18] Every year he was drafted an IEP, but, in his fourth grade year, his parents were worried that he was “stalling” and failing to “make meaningful progress.”[19] As a result, his parents rejected his fifth grade IEP because they feared it would garner limited results.[20] After a litany of failed exchanges between his parents and the school district, Endrew was transferred to a private school specializing in education for children with autism.[21] After about two years, his parents sought reimbursement for tuition from the school district.[22] To be awarded this relief, Endrew’s parents had to show that the school district did not provide Endrew a valid FAPE.[23]

After being denied reimbursement by the administrative judge and the federal district judge, Endrew’s parents appealed to the Tenth Circuit. There, the court found that Endrew was not entitled to relief under the IDEA because an “IEP is adequate as long as it is calculated to confer an educational benefit that is merely more than de minimis.”[24] In other words, the school district just had to prove that their IEP would provide some progress.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court reversed the Tenth Circuit’s decision. The Court held that “a school must offer an IEP reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child’s circumstances [to meet its substantive obligation under the IDEA.]” [25] Now, a school district must cautiously craft an adequate IEP and pay special attention to a disabled child’s specific needs. A school district can no longer rely on an IEP that may prove to create some unremarkable progress, if any, for the child. Rather, school districts across the country must now consider every disabled child’s needs on a more stringent case-by-case basis. This, coupled with already well-established disability laws at the local level, is a step in the right direction for advocates of inclusion and equality between disabled and non-disabled children.

[1] 137 S. Ct. 988 (2017).

[2] 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq. (2017).

[3] Endrew, 137 S. Ct. at 993; see also 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq. (2017).

[4] § 1412(a)(1).

[5] “Special education” is defined as “specially designed instruction . . . to meet the unique needs of a child with a disability.” § 1401(26).

[6] “Related services” is defined as “the support services ‘required to assist a child . . . to benefit from’ that instruction.” Endrew, 137 S. Ct. at 994 (quoting § 1401(29)).

[7] Id. (quoting § 1401(9)(D)).

[8] § 1414(d)(1)(B).

[9] Endrew, 137 S. Ct. at 994 (quoting Bd. of Educ. of Hendrick Hudson Cent. Sch. Dist., Westchester Cty. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 181 (1982)).

[10] Id. (quoting § 1414 (d)(1)(A)(i)(IV)).

[11] Rowley, 458 U.S. 176.

[12] Id. at 184.

[13] Id. at 185.

[14] Id.

[15] Endrew v. Douglas County School Dist. RE-1, 137 S. Ct. 988, 995–96 (citing id. at 200–02).

[16] Bd. of Educ. of Hendrick Hudson Cent. Sch. Dist., Westchester Cty. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 204 (1982).

[17] Id. (The Court declined “to establish any one test for determining the adequacy of educational benefits conferred upon all children covered by the Act.”).

[18] Endrew, 137 S. Ct. at 997.

[19] Id.

[20] See id.

[21] Endrew v. Douglas County School Dist. RE-1, 137 S. Ct. at 997.

[22] See id.

[23] Id.

[24] Id. at 997–1000.

[25] Id. at 999.