School Union No. 37 v. Ms. C.

• Citation: 518 F.3d 31
• Decision Date: 26 February 2008
• Docket Number: No. 06-2261.,06-2261.
• Parties: SCHOOL UNION NO. 37, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. MS. C.; DB, Defendants, Appellants.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

518 F.3d 31

SCHOOL UNION NO. 37, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. MS. C.; DB, Defendants, Appellants.

No. 06-2261.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard February 5, 2007.

Decided February 26, 2008.

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

Brendan P. Rielly, with whom Jensen Baird Gardner & Henry was on brief, for appellee.

Before LIPEZ, Circuit Judge, JOHN R. GIBSON, Senior Circuit Judge^*, and STAHL, Senior Circuit Judge.

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge.

DB and his mother, Ms. C, filed a request for a due process hearing with the Maine Department of Education after DB turned nineteen and was no longer enrolled in school. Although all of DB's special education tuition had been paid, he and his mother sought reimbursement for past room and board and transportation expenses associated with DB's education in private schools outside of Maine. They obtained the relief they were seeking from the Maine special education hearing officer. School Union No. 37 then filed this action in the district court under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. §§ 1400-1490 ("IDEA"), to challenge the administrative decision. The district court entered judgment for the School Union. Ms. C and DB appeal, arguing that their action was not barred by the equitable defense of laches. We affirm.

I.

During the years in question, 1999 to 2004, Ms. C was a resident of Dallas Plantation, Maine. Dallas Plantation does not have schools of its own, and therefore its residents have options for their children's education. Under Maine's "local choice" option, Me.Rev.Stat. Ann. tit. 20-A §§ 5203.4, 5204.4, residents of Dallas Plantation are permitted to send their children to the school of their choice, and Dallas Plantation is responsible for the tuition at a state-approved rate, Me.Rev.Stat. Ann. tit. 20-A §§ 5804, 5805. Those who choose the closest public school send their elementary students to the Rangeley Lakes Regional School. DB attended Rangeley Lakes from kindergarten to sixth grade.

Maine law permits Dallas Plantation to be part of a school union, a body composed of school administrative units that are joined for the purpose of providing joint administrative services, including a joint superintendent. Me.Rev.Stat. Ann. tit. 20-A § 1.31. School Union No. 37 is the school administrative unit that includes Dallas Plantation.

DB was initially referred for special education services by his first grade teacher at the Rangeley School in the fall of 1992. Pursuant to its obligations under the IDEA, the school scheduled a Pupil Evaluation Team ("PET") meeting to discuss DB's needs. Ms. C agreed to the meeting date but did not attend. The meeting went forward with his classroom teacher and two special education team members, and collectively they recommended that DB receive academic and learning development testing along with classroom observation. The school told Ms. C of the team's recommendations, but Ms. C did not agree with the assessment. She did not allow DB to be tested. The team contacted her again four months later to see if she was ready to proceed with their recommended evaluation, and she responded that the issue was "closed" on any testing for DB. Ms. C later changed her mind, and in May of 1993, DB underwent a medical and psychological evaluation and a behavior assessment. Three months later he had an educational assessment. DB ultimately was diagnosed as having Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and a learning disability.

The PET team met again at the beginning of the 1993-94 school year, a year in which DB repeated first grade, and he was determined eligible to receive special education services as a student with a learning disability. Ms. C attended this meeting. The team agreed upon an Individual Education Plan ("IEP") for DB. Ms. C was to follow up on possible medical issues, the staff was to write and implement a behavioral plan, and DB was to receive individual help in the resource room for at least thirty minutes a day. DB began taking medication shortly thereafter, and by the next PET meeting in May of 1994, he was better able to attend to schoolwork and follow rules.

DB's second through fifth grade years had their ups and downs. He continued to receive special education services at the Rangeley School, which the school provided pursuant to regularly conducted PET meetings. His mother withdrew him from the Rangeley School in 1998, at the beginning of sixth grade, following an in-school suspension DB received from an incident with a fellow student. Ms. C, who had been an elementary school teacher and Dallas Plantation School Board member, informed the school during a PET meeting that she was going to home-school DB. Although the school recognized that she had the right to do so, the special educators indicated they were aware of the ongoing obligation to provide DB with a free appropriate public education. They sent Ms. C a letter to that effect and invited her to contact them if she wanted DB to resume his participation in the school's special education program. DB did not return to the Rangeley School or any other school in the state of Maine after he withdrew in the fall of 1998.

While DB was a student at the Rangeley School, five IEPs were prepared for him. Ms. C did not object to any of the IEPs, the determinations that came out of PET meetings, or the level of services the school provided to DB. During the year he was home-schooled, the Rangeley School convened another annual PET meeting and met to review DB's home-school program and write an IEP. Ms. C attended this meeting and informed those in attendance that DB would be attending the Greenwood School in Vermont for the 1999-2000 school year. As a resident of Dallas Plantation, she was aware that she was free to choose the school DB would attend. No school official or medical professional who evaluated DB opined that he needed to attend a residential school, but Ms. C chose the Greenwood School because she believed it would uniquely meet his special education needs. Again, she did not challenge the latest IEP that Rangeley had developed, and neither it nor any other IEP created for DB from 1993 to 1999 determined that he required residential placement in order to receive a free appropriate public education.

Although DB never attended another school in Maine after 1998, he remained a student until 2004. He was at Greenwood from the fall of 1999 until November of 2000. In January of 2001, Ms. C enrolled DB in New Dominion, located in Dillwyn, Virginia. DB attended and lived at New Dominion until August of 2002, when Ms. C enrolled him in the Brush Ranch school in Terrero, New Mexico. DB remained at Brush Ranch until the spring of 2004, just before his eighteenth birthday. Dallas Plantation paid all of DB's tuition at each of the private schools he attended, which included the standard tuition rate set by the state of Maine and any special education services in excess of that rate that were authorized by an IEP. In other words, Dallas Plantation paid both regular tuition and special education tuition to all three out-of-state private schools.

In 2005, after DB reached the age of 19 and was no longer a student, he and his mother sought a due process hearing from the Maine Department of Education on the issue of reimbursement for room and board, transportation expenses, and other related expenses from 1999 until 2004. The hearing officer awarded Ms. C and DB reimbursement of $48,890 for room and board expenses during those years and $3,241.33 for transportation expenses. The School Union filed the complaint in this action in district court, asserting seven alternative grounds to reverse the hearing officer's determination. The magistrate judge recommended that judgment be entered for the School Union on the affirmative defense of laches, and the district court adopted the recommendation.¹ Neither addressed the other grounds for reversal.

II.

Reimbursement is an equitable remedy. Murphy v. Timberlane Reg'l School Dist., 973 F.2d 13, 16 (1st Cir.1992) ("Murphy I"). Accordingly, it is subject to the equitable defense of laches, which bars a claim for equitable relief "where a party's delay in bringing suit was 1) unreasonable, and 2) resulted in prejudice to the opposing party." K-Mart Corp. v. Oriental Plaza, Inc., 875 F.2d 907, 911 (1st Cir.1989). Unreasonableness of the delay depends both on time elapsed and on whether Ms. C. and DB acquiesced in the alleged wrong. See Jamesbury Corp. v. Worcester Valve Co., 443 F.2d 205, 210 (1st Cir.1971) ("Laches requires not only a passage of time but also acquiescence in the alleged wrong by the tardy plaintiff."). The proponent of the doctrine must make a clear showing of prejudice, Murphy v. Timberlane Reg'l Sch. Dist., 22 F.3d 1186, 1189 (1st Cir.1994) ("Murphy II"), which generally arises in IDEA cases from the school being stripped of the opportunity to make changes to a student's program that might have obviated the need for a private school and from having to defend IEPs developed years earlier. E.g., L.K. v. Bd. of Educ. for Transylvania County, 113 F.Supp.2d 856, 861 (W.D.N.C.2000); Phillips v. Bd. of Educ. of the Hendrick Hudson School Dist., 949 F.Supp. 1108, 1113-14 (S.D.N.Y.1997).

The School Union filed this action under 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(2)(B) to challenge the hearing officer's decision. The statute directs the district court to "grant such relief as the court determines is appropriate," using a preponderance of the evidence standard. Id. When the district court reviews the administrative ruling, it exercises its discretion, informed by the record and by the expertise of the administrative agency and the school officials, as to how much deference to afford the administrative proceedings. Lenn v. Portland Sch. Comm., 998 F.2d 1083, 1087 (1st Cir.1993); Hampton Sch. Dist. v. Dobrowolski, ...