Maine School Administrative Dist. No. 35 v. Mr. R.

• Citation: 321 F.3d 9
• Decision Date: 24 February 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-1312.,No. 01-1714.,01-1714.,02-1312.
• Parties: MAINE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT NO. 35, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. MR. AND MRS. R., on their own Behalf and on Behalf of their Son, S.R., Defendants, Appellants. Mr. and Mrs. R., on their own Behalf and on Behalf of their Son, S.R., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Maine School Administrative District No. 35, Defendant, Appellee.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

321 F.3d 9

MAINE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT NO. 35, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. MR. AND MRS. R., on their own Behalf and on Behalf of their Son, S.R., Defendants, Appellants.

Mr. and Mrs. R., on their own Behalf and on Behalf of their Son, S.R., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Maine School Administrative District No. 35, Defendant, Appellee.

No. 01-1714.

No. 02-1312.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard December 4, 2002.

Decided February 24, 2003.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Richard L. O'Meara, with whom Amy M. Sneirson and Murray, Plumb & Murray were on brief, for appellants.

Eric R. Herlan, with whom Drummond Woodsum & MacMahon were on brief, for appellee.

Before SELYA, Circuit Judge, FARRIS,^* Senior Circuit Judge, and HOWARD, Circuit Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 20 U.S.C. §§ 1400-1487 (1997), obligates school districts to furnish a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to children with disabilities. See id. §§ 1401(8), 1411(b)(2)(C), 1412(a)(1), 1413(i)(1), 1415(b)(1). That is the good news. The bad news is that the IDEA is not self-executing, and parents, school officials, bureaucrats, and judges alike have struggled to master its intricacies.

These consolidated appeals illustrate the point. Taken together, they present two loosely related questions. The first concerns whether parents who successfully resist a school district's effort, in an independent legal action, to overturn a stay-put placement on the ground of the alleged dangerousness of a child with disabilities are considered prevailing parties within the purview of the IDEA's fee-shifting provision. The second concerns the circumstances under which a learning-disabled child who, by reason of his age, is no longer covered by the IDEA may nonetheless be entitled to some relief to compensate him for the deprivation of a FAPE during an earlier period. The district court answered these questions in ways that pretermitted the appellants' claims for attorneys' fees and compensatory education. Concluding, as we do, that the court erred, we reverse the judgments below and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

We sketch the relevant facts. The appellants, Mr. and Mrs. R., are the parents of S.R. S.R., who was born in December of 1980, suffers from Down's Syndrome. He has had special educational needs throughout his formative years. During the times material hereto, Maine School Administrative District No. 35 (the School District) has had the responsibility of ministering to these needs.

Generally speaking, the IDEA obliged the School District to furnish S.R. with a FAPE sufficient to confer some educational benefit. See Bd. of Educ. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 207, 102 S.Ct. 3034, 73 L.Ed.2d 690 (1982); Roland M. v. Concord Sch. Comm., 910 F.2d 983, 992 (1st Cir. 1990). Federal law directs school districts to carry out such a duty through the development and implementation of an annual individualized education program (IEP). See 20 U.S.C. §§ 1401(11), 1412(a)(4), 1414(d); see also 34 C.F.R. §§ 300.340-50. S.R. was eligible for such special education services through the 2000-2001 school year (when he turned twenty years of age). See 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(1)(B)(i)-(ii) (linking eligibility for special education services to state law); Me.Rev.Stat. tit. 20-A, § 5201(1) (granting every student the right to public education through the school year encompassing his or her twentieth birthday).

It would serve no useful purpose to discuss S.R.'s early scholastic experiences. Rather, we begin with the 1999-2000 school year (which encompassed S.R.'s nineteenth birthday). In furtherance of its responsibilities under the IDEA, the School District prepared an IEP for that year. Under it, S.R. spent mornings at Marshwood High School and afternoons at a work-site training program (where he also received some special education services).

During the 1999-2000 school year, S.R. displayed a variety of behavioral problems, including verbal outbursts and assaultive conduct. Believing that these problems stemmed from S.R.'s "ineffective and frustrating" IEP, Mr. and Mrs. R. repeatedly requested modifications. Officials of the School District met with the family many times to address these remonstrances, discuss S.R.'s current IEP, and ponder his future curriculum.

In June of 2000, the School District proffered a new IEP for the 2000-2001 school year. Under this proposal, S.R. was to be relegated to a work-site training program for the entire school day. His vocational training would be augmented with monthly speech therapy, sign language lessons, behavioral consultations, and social skills instruction.

S.R.'s parents rejected this proposal. They took especial umbrage at the fact that the draft IEP completely removed S.R. from a mainstream academic setting. Concluding that this circumstance violated their son's right to receive educational services in the least restrictive environment possible, see 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(5), the parents sought a hearing before the Maine Department of Education, see id. § 1415(f). The parents simultaneously invoked the IDEA's stay-put provision, id. § 1415(j), so that S.R. would remain in his 1999-2000 educational placement pending a resolution of his 2000-2001 IEP.¹ The School District defended the draft IEP, and, accordingly, resisted the parents' administrative petition.

The School District then took a more unusual step: it initiated a civil action in the United States District Court for the District of Maine (the First Suit) seeking to bar S.R. from returning to Marshwood High because his presence there would pose (or so the School District alleged) a substantial risk of danger to himself or others. Coincident with the filing of its complaint, the School District moved for temporary and preliminary injunctive relief. After reviewing the motion papers and the family's objection, the district court refused to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO). The effect of that ruling was to leave the stay-put order (and, thus, S.R.'s placement at Marshwood High) intact. The School District chose not to pursue the matter further, but, rather, moved to dismiss its complaint. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 41(a). The parents did not object but asserted an entitlement to attorneys' fees and costs. See 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(3)(B). The district court granted the School District's motion for voluntary dismissal but denied the parents' request for remuneration on the ground that they were not a prevailing party. Me. Sch. Admin. Dist. No. 35 v. Mr. & Mrs. R., Civ. No. 00-242 (D.Me. Apr. 9, 2001). The parents filed a timely appeal.

Meanwhile, the administrative hearing anent the adequacy of the proposed 2000-2001 IEP went forward on a parallel track. In a decision dated October 31, 2000, the hearing officer approved the concept of a totally non-scholastic placement but determined that the IEP was inadequate in other respects. Consequently, he ordered the School District to prepare an amended IEP. The parents exercised their right to judicial review of this decision, see 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(2)(A); they commenced an action in the federal district court (the Second Suit) in which they sought to overturn the hearing officer's approval of S.R.'s work-site placement. The School District filed a cross-complaint challenging other parts of the administrative decision.

In December of 2001, S.R. reached his twentieth birthday. The following June, he graduated from Marshwood High. Upon the occurrence of that event, the School District took the position that the parents' appeal from the administrative decision had become moot. In their reply, the parents gainsaid this contention. They pointed out that S.R. had dropped out of his special education program at Marshwood High during the 2000-2001 school year and asserted that he was entitled to compensatory education to offset the inadequate IEP that the School District had proposed.² After some skirmishing (the details of which need not concern us), the district court ruled that the suit was not "procedural[ly] moot[]" because the parents had raised the claim for compensatory education in a timely fashion.³ Me. Sch. Admin. Dist. No. 35 v. Mr. & Mrs. R., 176 F.Supp.2d 15, 24-25 (D.Me.2001). The court nevertheless dismissed the case for what it termed "substantive mootness," declaring that "S.R. [had] received, for all that appears in the record, the very relief he and his parents initially sought in this action, by virtue of the ... `stay-put' ruling." Id. at 25. The second appeal followed. We consolidated it with the earlier appeal (which had been stayed) for briefing and argument. We now resolve both appeals.

II. ANALYSIS

The parents — we henceforth shall refer to them as the appellants — press ahead on two fronts. They assign error to the lower court's determination that they were not prevailing parties in the First Suit. They also protest the district court's dismissal of the Second Suit as moot, pointing to the pendency of their compensatory education claim. We address these points sequentially.

A. The Attorneys' Fee Claim.

In most civil litigation, the parties are responsible for paying their own attorneys' fees. See Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v. W. Va. Dep't of Health & Human Res., 532 U.S. 598, 602, 121 S.Ct. 1835, 149 L.Ed.2d 855 (2001); Gay Officers Action League v. Puerto Rico, 247 F.3d 288, 293 (1st Cir.2001). Despite this general rule, Congress sometimes chooses to allow for fee-shifting in particular situations, and it chose to do so in connection with the IDEA. The statute provides in relevant part:

In any action or proceeding brought under [section 1415 of the IDEA], the court, in its discretion, may award reasonable attorneys' fees as part of the costs to the parents of a child with a disability who is the prevailing party.

20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(3)(B). Because this provision employs the phrase "pr...