Parents who enroll their child in a private school for reasons unrelated to educational issues associated with his identifiable disability are not entitled to reimbursement for private school tuition under IDEA
A federal district in Oregon has ruled that the equities do not support reimbursing parents for their child’s private school tuition under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) when the parents enrolled the student based on drug abuse and behavior problems, rather than educational difficulties associated with ADHD. T.A. was enrolled in the Forest Grove School District (FGSD) from kindergarten until the spring semester of his junior year. He was evaluated only once for a disability and never received any special education services. After he became a chronic marijuana user and began engaging in self-destructive behavior, his parents removed him from public school and sought reimbursement under IDEA for the cost of the private school. T.A. was first enrolled in an outdoor therapy program and then placed in a private residential school “designed for children who may have academic, behavioral, emotional, or motivational problems.” A hearing officer (HO) ruled that T.A.’s ADHD adversely affected his educational performance, that the School District failed to meet its obligations under IDEA in not identifying respondent as a student eligible for special-education services under both IDEA and § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and that T.A. had been denied a free appropriate public education (FAPE) as required by IDEA. The HO concluded that FGSD was not responsible for the cost of the outdoor therapy program, but was responsible for the cost of the private residential school placement. FGSD appealed to federal district court, which reversed the HO’s decision, holding that the HO had erred as a matter of law in granting private school reimbursement. It ruled that T.A. was “statutorily ineligible for reimbursement under” IDEA. It concluded that “[e]ven assuming that tuition reimbursement may be ordered . . . under general principles of equity . . . the facts in this case do not support such an exercise of equity.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the case for reconsideration. It addressed only whether a student who has never received special education services from a school district may be eligible under IDEA for reimbursement of the cost of private school placement. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the Ninth Circuit, holding that language added to IDEA in 1997 does not categorically bar reimbursement when a parent unilaterally places in private school a child who has not previously received special education services through the public school.
On remand, the district court concluded that the “[g]eneral principles of equity weigh against payment of tuition reimbursement.” It found that the “decisive factor” in the case was that the parents had enrolled the student at the private school not because of any disability recognized under IDEA, but because of the student’s drug abuse and behavioral problems. The district court also noted that the parents had chosen an “extraordinarily expensive” private school option. Although the district court made note of the great cost to FGSD to provide private school placement to students suffering from ADHD and that IDEA “makes no provision for taking into account the proportional impact of this unfunded federal program,” it emphasized that because neither the Ninth Circuit nor Supreme Court indicated that it should take those facts into account, it had not.
Forest Grove Sch. Dist. v. T.A., No. 04-331 (D. Ore. Dec. 8, 2009)
[Editor’s Note: In June 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in this case. The Court, in a 6-3 split, ruled that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) does not bar reimbursement for private school placement of a special education student when a public school fails to provide that student with a free appropriate public education (FAPE) and the student has not previously received special-education services from the public school. NSBA participated in the case as an amicus in support of FGSD. A summary of the Supreme Court’s decision, with links to NSBA’s amicus brief and additional background on the case, is available below.]
NSBA School Law pages on FGSD v. T.A.