Case Information
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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 (1982);
Roland M. v. Concord Sch. Comm.,
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 *5 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 *6 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 *7 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 *8 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 *9 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
(2001); Gay Officers Action League v. Puerto Rico,
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 "prevailing party" — a term of art — it must be interpreted
and applied in the same manner as other federal fee-shifting
statutes that use the same phraseology. See New Hampshire v.
Adams, 159 F.3d 680, 684 (1st Cir. 1998) (explaining that, in
construing the IDEA's fee-shifting provision, "cases decided under
kindred federal fee-shifting statutes, such as the Fees Act, 42
U.S.C. § 1988, furnish persuasive authority"); H.R. Rep. No. 105-
95, at 105-106 (1997), reprinted in 1997 U.S.C.C.A.N. 78, 103-104
(stating that section 1415(i)(3)(B) should be construed in keeping
with Hensley v. Eckerhart,
For purposes of a federal fee-shifting statute, a
prevailing party is any party who "succeed[s] on any significant
issue . . . which achieves some of the benefits plaintiffs sought
in bringing suit." Hensley,
The appellants ask for attorneys' fees referable only to the First Suit. Their position is straightforward: the School District commenced a civil action and the appellants successfully defended against it (i.e., the School District did not receive any of the relief that it sought and, eventually, threw in the towel). The School District rejoins that this victory was merely interlocutory — a single battle in the war over the 2000-2001 IEP — and therefore is insufficient to support prevailing party status. We test these hypotheses.
In general, the materiality requirement demands that a
party succeed on the merits of a claim or defense. Adams, 159 F.3d
at 684. But a party may be considered "prevailing" even without
obtaining a favorable final judgment on all (or even the most
crucial) of her claims. Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 603; Rome Sch.
Comm. v. Mrs. B.,
On the other hand, interlocutory orders that serve merely
to maintain the status quo usually are deemed insufficient to buoy
a fee award. See LSO, Ltd. v. Stroh,
This case, however, is not cut from the usual cloth. We are dealing here not with a stay-put order issued, on an interlocutory basis, in the course of ongoing judicial review. Rather, the First Suit was an independent, free-standing civil action, instituted by the School District, in which it sought to enjoin the operation of the stay-put provision. That quest for injunctive relief was the sole object — the raison d'être — of the First Suit.
To be sure, the School District probably saw the First
Suit as a piece of a larger dispute between it and the appellants
over the 2000-2001 IEP. But a party's subjective view of a cause
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of action counts for very little in determining prevailing party
status. See Tex. State Teachers' Ass'n,
We deem it important to emphasize that the School District, not the appellants, brought the First Suit. The appellants were haled into court as defendants and won a clear-cut victory on the sole issue in the case (an issue that had been framed by the School District). A triumphant defendant may qualify as a prevailing party for the purpose of obtaining a fee award. See, e.g., Weyant v. Okst, 198 F.3d 311, 316 (2d Cir. 1999) (collecting cases); see also Burke v. Guiney, 700 F.2d 767, 771
(1st Cir. 1983). It follows inexorably that a defendant who
prevails on the only claim that justifies the presence of the case
in a federal court has a legitimate basis for asserting that she is
the prevailing party. See Perlman v. Zell,
Cir. 1999).
This conclusion is reinforced by our awareness that the
School District could have appealed the stay-put order as part and
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parcel of judicial review of the IEP, see 20 U.S.C. §
1415(i)(2)(A), but eschewed that course. It elected instead to
pursue an independent cause of action by invoking a statute that
permits temporary changes in a child's placement if a school
district can demonstrate "by substantial evidence that maintaining
the current placement of such child is substantially likely to
result in injury to the child or to others." Id. § 1415(k)(2)(A).
This statute does not carve out an exception to section 1415(j)'s
stay-put provision. See Honig v. Doe,
In fine, the School District chose to make S.R.'s alleged dangerousness a contested issue in and of itself and to try to change his placement accordingly. That is to say, the injunctive action that it brought under section 1415(k)(2) (the First Suit) *16 attempted to work an autarkic material alteration in the legal relations between the parties. Defeating that attempt, once and for all, gave the appellants solid ground on which to base prevailing party status. [6]
This result squares with commonly accepted notions of
materiality in the fee-shifting context. The materiality of a
judicial outcome depends in part on whether the result is purely
procedural or whether it actually accomplishes something
substantive for the winning party. See Adams,
For these reasons, we conclude that the appellants were the prevailing parties in the First Suit, and that the district court erred as a matter of law in holding to the contrary. Accordingly, we reverse the district court's order and remand the First Suit so that the court may determine whether special circumstances exist that might bar an award, and, if not, the amount of attorneys' fees and costs to which the appellants are entitled.
B. The Compensatory Education Claim.
We turn now to the justiciability of the appellants' compensatory education claim. It is black-letter law that, in a federal court, justiciability requires the existence of an actual case or controversy. U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 1. Even if an actual case or controversy exists at the inception of litigation, a case may be rendered moot (and, therefore, subject to dismissal) if changed circumstances eliminate any possibility of effectual relief. CMM Cable Rep., Inc. v. Ocean Coast Props., Inc., 48 F.3d
618, 620-21 (1st Cir. 1995).
In a suit seeking only injunctive relief, this ordinarily
means that once the act sought to be enjoined occurs, the suit must
be dismissed as moot. E.g., Oakville Dev. Corp. v. FDIC, 986 F.2d
611, 613 (1st Cir. 1993). If, however, a plaintiff seeks
alternative redress (such as money damages) in addition to
injunctive relief, the occurrence of the watershed event may not
render the controversy moot. CMM Cable Rep., 48 F.3d at 621;
Curtis Indus., Inc. v. Livingstone, 30 F.3d 96, 97-98 (8th Cir.
1994). We review de novo a lower court's dismissal of an action on
the ground of mootness. See Verhoeven v. Brunswick Sch. Comm., 207
F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 1999); N.H. Right to Life Political Action
Comm. v. Gardner,
In this instance, the question of mootness depends on the
viability of the appellants' compensatory education claim. We know
that a child eligible for special education services under the IDEA
may be entitled to further services, in compensation for past
deprivations, even after his or her eligibility has expired. See,
e.g., Adams,
Orderly procedure suggests that we bifurcate our discussion of this issue. We first must determine whether the appellants timely asserted their claim for compensatory education. If so, we then must address the question of whether S.R. arguably suffered a deprivation of services that would give rise to such a claim.
1. Timeliness.
The district court concluded that the
appellants had advanced the compensatory education claim in a
timely manner. See Me. Sch. Admin. Dist.,
In a related vein, we reject the School District's
importuning that the compensatory education claim was barred by a
failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The appellants'
objections to the IEP related only to S.R.'s final year in school.
S.R. was within the eligible age limits when that year began; by
the time that year ended, the administrative record had been closed
for quite some time and the case was pending before the district
court. Although parents ordinarily must exhaust their
administrative remedies before appealing to a federal court, see
Frazier v. Fairhaven Sch. Comm., 276 F.3d 52, 59, 63 (1st Cir.
2002), the appellants' failure to raise a then-nonexistent
compensatory education claim before the hearing officer is not
fatal to judicial review. See id. at 59; Pihl,
2. Mootness.
We turn next to the district court's
holding that the compensatory education claim was substantively
moot. Me. Sch. Admin. Dist.,
S.R.'s placement at a work site rather than in a school was only a part of the overall IEP. The record shows beyond hope of contradiction that the appellants sought from the beginning an appropriate IEP for the 2000-2001 school year — a new IEP that did not merely replicate S.R.'s unsuccessful 1999-2000 IEP. The *21 hearing officer responded to these expressed concerns, dissecting the School District's suggested IEP, approving parts of it (including the work-site placement) and disapproving other parts. Although the appellants only sought judicial review of the placement decision, not of the order to add other features to the IEP, the fact remains that S.R. never enjoyed the benefits that would have flowed from the implementation of those other features. In short, while S.R. was not relegated to a work site for the 2000- 2001 school year, he may not have received an appropriate IEP for that year (and, thus, may not have received the FAPE to which he was entitled).
The School District attempts to cast doubt upon the factual antecedents of the appellants' position. The attempt fails. The record fully supports the appellants' asseveration that, all along, they sought the development of an appropriate IEP, different from both the previous IEP (1999-2000) and the proposed IEP (2000-2001). Indeed, their criticisms of the 1999-2000 IEP were vociferous. So viewed, the appellants have a colorable claim that the continuation of this benighted placement into the 2000- 2001 school year deprived S.R. of the compendium of services reasonably necessary to constitute a FAPE. See Roland M., 910 F.2d at 992.
Let us be perfectly clear. We recognize that
compensatory education is not an appropriate remedy for a purely
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procedural violation of the IDEA. Erickson v. Albuquerque Pub.
Sch., 199 F.3d 1116, 1122-23 (10th Cir. 1999). In contrast, a
substantive violation may give rise to a claim for compensatory
relief. See Rome Sch. Comm.,
In an effort to blunt the force of this reasoning, the
School District complains that the appellants forced it, through
the invocation of the stay-put provision, to maintain S.R.'s
contested 1999-2000 IEP throughout the 2000-2001 school year (or
nearly so). That is true as far as it goes — but it does not
advance the School District's cause. The appellants never sought
a stay-put placement as relief on the merits before either the
hearing officer or the district court. For them, the stay-put
placement was merely the lesser of two evils.
[7]
See Burr v. Ambach,
863 F.2d 1071, 1076 (2d Cir. 1988) (describing the stay-put
provision as protection against an even worse placement during the
pendency of review proceedings). Conferring blanket immunity from
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compensatory education claims during the course of a stay-put
placement would reward school districts for misfeasance or
nonfeasance in providing appropriate educational services. Cf.
Jefferson County Bd. of Educ. v. Breen,
The School District also submits that the appellants failed to allege specific facts in support of their claim for compensatory education. They suggest that the appellants needed to *24 show precisely what services S.R. should have received (but did not) during the 2000-2001 school year. This sets the bar too high.
The IDEA constructs a framework that ensures procedural due process in the IEP context. See 20 U.S.C. § 1415. It does not
attempt to delineate the specific substance of any particular
child's IEP. That is as it should be: IEPs are by their very
nature idiosyncratic, and the appropriate content of a particular
child's IEP for a given year can only be determined by those
assigned to evaluate the child and develop the IEP (with the help
of the parents). See id. §§ 1401(11), 1412(a)(4), 1414(d); 34
C.F.R. §§ 300.340-50. In mounting a challenge to a current or
proposed IEP, the most that parents can be expected to do is to
point out areas in which the IEP is deficient. See Rowley, 458
U.S. at 208-09; Erickson,
These tenets hold true vis-à-vis claims for compensatory
education. See Cent. Reg'l Sch. Dist.,
None of this is equivalent to saying that S.R. is entitled to compensatory education. We hold only that the appellants' claim for compensatory education deserves to be considered on the merits and that the district court should not have jettisoned it as moot. Accordingly, the order of dismissal must be reversed and the compensatory education issue remanded to the district court. If the district court does not believe that the record is sufficient to permit it to make the highly nuanced judgments necessary to resolve the claim for compensatory education, it may remand the matter for further administrative adjudication.
III. CONCLUSION
We need go no further. [8] We hold that the appellants were prevailing parties in the First Suit; that the claim for compensatory education was properly raised, and remained viable, in the Second Suit; and that, therefore, the district court erred in its adjudication of appellants' claims. Hence, we reverse the judgments below and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
*26 Reversed and remanded. Costs are taxed in favor of the appellants.
Notes
[1] The stay-put provision, with an exception not applicable here, states: [D]uring the pendency of any proceedings conducted pursuant to [IDEA § 1415], unless the State or local educational agency and the parents otherwise agree, the child shall remain in the then-current educational placement of such child, . . . until all such proceedings have been completed. 20 U.S.C. § 1415(j).
[2] We need not dwell on the withdrawal, as it is irrelevant to
the appellants' compensatory education claim. Cf. Zobrest v.
Catalina Foothills Sch. Dist.,
[3] The district judge — the same judge who earlier had dismissed the First Suit without an award of attorneys' fees — referred the School District's motion to dismiss to a magistrate judge. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B); Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b). He thereafter accepted and adopted the magistrate judge's detailed report and recommendation. For simplicity's sake, we do not distinguish between the two judicial officers. Rather, we take an institutional view and refer to the determinations below as those of the district court.
[4] In a case involving the fee-shifting provisions of the
Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12205, and the Fair
Housing Act Amendments, id. § 3613(c)(2), the Supreme Court
concluded that the change in the legal relationship must be one to
which a judicial imprimatur attaches. Buckhannon,
[5] We say "often" because the rule is not invariable. See,
e.g., Foreman v. Dallas County,
[6] This result is not altered because the critical decision took
place on a motion for a TRO. The court below must have been
cognizant of the delays characteristic of administrative and
judicial proceedings under the IDEA. See Burlington Sch. Comm. v.
Mass. Dep't of Educ., 471 U.S. 359, 370 (1985) (describing such
proceedings as "ponderous"). Thus, the denial of the School
District's motion was effectively a final judgment on the merits of
the "dangerousness" claim that the School District had brought.
See Coalition for Basic Human Needs v. King,
[7] The School District did not seek to secure the parents'
agreement to an alternative interim placement. See 20 U.S.C. §
1415(j) (quoted supra note 1) (permitting such consensual
arrangements). Such an agreement would have averted any liability
for compensatory education. See W.B. v. Matula,
[8] The appellants' complaint in the Second Suit also contained claims under the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794, and Maine's special education laws, Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 20-A, §§ 7001-8207. The district court never addressed these claims, and the parties do not discuss them on appeal. We therefore take no view as to their justiciability.