A.W. v. The Jersey City Pub. Sch., No. 05-2553 (3d Cir. May 24, 2007)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (DE, NJ, PA, VI) has ruled that actions cannot be brought against school officials under § 1983 for violations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), nor can § 1983 be used to remedy alleged violations of the Rehabilitation Act. Section 1983 allows a plaintiff to sue a public official who, acting under color of state law, violates rights secured by the federal constitution or statutes. The decision means that courts are imposing more restrictions on the availability of § 1983 actions. A dyslexic former high school student of the Jersey City Public Schools, A.W., sued state education department officials under § 1983 for alleged violations of the IDEA and Rehabilitation Act. Guided by a previous Supreme Court analysis, the court looked to the IDEA to determine whether Congress intended to allow rights granted by the IDEA to be remedied through a § 1983 action. According to the lawsuit, the parties do not dispute that the IDEA creates individually enforceable rights in the class of beneficiaries to which A.W. belongs. Thus, the court presumes that Congress intended § 1983 to be an available remedy for violations of the IDEA, however, defendants can rebut this presumption by showing that Congress, in fact, did not intend to do so. Consequently, the court looks to whether there is an express, private means of redress in the IDEA itself, which, without explicitly stating otherwise, would indicate that Congress did not intend to leave open a more expansive remedy under § 1983. After examining the IDEA, the Court determined that the provisions of the IDEA create an express, private means of redress, thus, a § 1983 action is not available to remedy violations of the IDEA such as those alleged by A.W., absent some "textual indication, express or implicit, that the [statutory] remedy is to complement, rather than supplant § 1983." Likewise, the court examined § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to determine whether Congress intended to allow rights granted by the Rehabilitation Act to be remedied through a § 1983 action. The court begins the analysis by first looking at the types of redress available under the statute itself. Upon a thorough examination of the remedial scheme in § 504, the court concludes that there is no showing that it was intended to complement, rather than supplant § 1983, thus, the court finds that § 1983 is not available to provide a remedy for defendants’ alleged violations of A.W.’s rights under Section 504 and holds that A.W. has not alleged an actionable violation of his rights under the IDEA or Section 504.
A.W. v. The Jersey City Pub. Sch., No. 05-2553 (3d Cir. May 24, 2007)
[Full opinion]