Winkelman v. Parma City School District
The Supreme Court permits parents to represent themselves in claims under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
The United States Supreme Court opened the courthouse doors for the parents of children with disabilities by holding that they have a personal right to have their children appropriately educated. This means they can proceed in federal court without a lawyer when bringing claims under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal law providing that children with disabilities are entitled to a free, appropriate public education (FAPE).
Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion for seven justices reversing the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, concurred in part and dissented in part. In concluding that the IDEA creates independent, enforceable rights for parents in the special education of their children, Justice Kennedy avoided the question of whether the non-lawyer parents were, in effect, representing their children when they appeared in court pro se. Because individuals may prosecute their own claims in federal court without legal representation, but not the claims of others, the recognition that parents have rights separate from the rights of their children was the linchpin of the parents’ victory.
The primary entitlement created in the 30-year-old Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is the right for a child with disabilities to an appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment, pursuant to an individualized education program (IEP). Throughout the statute, parents are given rights to participate in the determination of eligibility of the child for special education services and the formulation of the child’s IEP. Parents also have the right to challenge any decision of the school district regarding the disabled child’s eligibility and the educational services provided to the child by initiating an administrative hearing process. Parents also may choose to reject the educational program offered by the school district, enroll their child in private school, and initiate an administrative hearing to obtain tuition reimbursement. Parents must prove in that hearing that the school district’s program did not allow the child to make reasonable progress and the school they selected was appropriate. Decisions of the administrative hearing officer may be appealed to federal district court.
In Winkelman v. Parma, the parents of an autistic child, Jacob Winkelman, participated with the Parma City School District in Ohio in the development of an IEP for their son. Ultimately, however, they felt that the program offered to Jacob was not appropriate to meet his needs, and they enrolled him in a private school. In accordance with the procedural rights provided to them by the IDEA, they filed for an administrative hearing. They claimed that the program in the public school offered to Jacob did not provide him with a “free, appropriate public education.” They also complained of a number of procedural violations that deprived them of a real role in the formulation of Jacob’s IEP. They asked the hearing officer to order tuition reimbursement and other costs. Unsuccessful in the administrative process, the Winkelmans appealed to federal district court, and when again unsuccessful, to the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Although they had the assistance of an attorney at times, they filed the appeals in federal court without a lawyer.
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit refused to let the case go forward unless the Winkelmans hired counsel. Basing its decision on its previous ruling in Cavanaugh v. Cardinal Local School District, the court held that the IDEA does not grant parents the right to represent their children in federal court. The court acknowledged that the IDEA allows the parents to pursue their child’s right to a FAPE in the administrative process, but could find no exception in the statute to the usual common-law rule that non-lawyers may not represent the claims of others in court. In Cavanaugh, the Court had explicitly rejected the proposition that parents have a personal right to their child’s education or that parents and their child share the right. It found that any procedural or reimbursement rights held by the parents were derivative of the child’s statutory right to special education, and thus even those rights could not be vindicated by parents without the assistance of counsel.
Courts of Appeals in several other circuits had taken differing positions on the issues presented in Winkelman. In the Seventh Circuit, for example, the court made a distinction between procedural and substantive claims, finding that the statute gives only procedural rights to parents. Thus, in Mosely v. Board of Education of the City of Chicago, the parent could proceed pro se on her procedural claim that she had been shut out of the decision-making process with regard to her son’s education, but she could not raise her son’s entitlement to appropriate services without an attorney. In the First Circuit, on the other hand, the rule was that parents could proceed pro se on all issues; the Court found in Maroni v. Pemi-Baker Regional School District that the IDEA made no distinction between substantive and procedural claims, so none would be imputed. It found that because parents were “parties” at the administrative level, they were likewise “parties” for purposes of filing suit and could therefore proceed pro se like any other party.
In reversing the holding in the Sixth Circuit, Justice Kennedy embraced the First Circuit’s analysis. Although the IDEA does not explicitly state that parents can proceed on IDEA claims in federal court without an attorney, the Court found that the “interlocking statutory provisions” reveal a Congressional intent to give independently enforceable rights to parents. The statute’s purpose includes ensuring that “the rights of children with disabilities and parents of such children are protected.” The statute expressly allows parents to proceed on their own throughout the administrative process to protect their child’s right to appropriate special education services, as well as their rights to participation in the decision-making with regard to their child and reimbursement for private services. It allows any “party” to that administrative proceeding to file a civil action in federal court, which includes pro se parents. It also allows them to obtain judicial review on any issue decided by the administrative hearing officer, not just procedural and reimbursement issues.
The Court could find nothing in the statute to distinguish various rights in a way that would have supported the Seventh Circuit’s analysis. “The statute’s procedural and reimbursement-related rights are intertwined with the substantive adequacy of the education provided to a child . . . and it is difficult to disentangle the provisions in order to conclude that some rights adhere to both parent and child while others do not.” Because parents are integrally involved at every step of the development of their child’s IEP, and ultimately have the burden of proving the substantive inadequacy of the child’s IEP before they can be reimbursed for private services, distinguishing between substantive, procedural, and reimbursement claims in the federal court review stage would “impose upon parties a confusing and onerous legal regime.”
In dissent, Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, disagreed with that point. He found the Seventh Circuit analysis persuasive, writing that parents should be able to proceed pro se only when seeking reimbursement for private school expenses or redress for violations of their own procedural rights, but not when seeking a judicial determination that the child’s services were inadequate. Justice Scalia analyzed the situation this way: “The parents of a disabled child no doubt have an interest in seeing their child receive a proper education. But there is a difference between an interest and a statutory right. The text of the IDEA makes clear that parents have no right to the education itself.” Thus, the dissenters would have required the parents to have an attorney when raising the substantive question of whether their son had received a free, appropriate public education from the Parma schools, but would have allowed them to go forward on their reimbursement and procedural claims.
The favorable ruling for parents comes on the heels of two recent IDEA decisions which made it more difficult for parents (whether represented or not) to prevail in these cases. In Schaffer v. Weast, the Court placed the burden of proof on parents attempting to show that the school district’s proposed IEP for the child was not appropriate, rather than on districts whose program was challenged. Shortly after that, the Court held in Arlington v. Murphy that the cost of experts needed by parents to meet that burden could not be awarded to parents when they prevailed in their cases. Had the Winkelman decision been unfavorable to parents, it would have added yet another significant obstacle for parents attempting to obtain appropriate services for their children, especially parents of limited means. While the compounded complexity of the special education law and federal court rules puts unrepresented parents at a distinct disadvantage, this decision at least saves their claims from dismissal.
The author, Jane R. Wettach, is the Director of the Children’s Education Law Clinic and a Clinical Professor of Law at Duke Law
School.
