SCOTUS Watch: Claim Exhaustion
We’ve been scooped! On the day this newsletter was set to go out, the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools. The justices voted unanimously in favor of the student and his right to sue under the ADA — without exhausting his IDEA claims.
By the time you read this, the Supreme Court will have heard the case of an immigrant family seeking to hold a Michigan school district responsible for the denial of their hearing-impaired son's right to a Free and Appropriate Public Education.
Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools, et al. concerns an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) claim for monetary damages, emotional distress, and lost income, as well as additional claims under the Rehabilitation Act and two Michigan disability statutes.
In Perez, the student was not taught how to read or write. Despite that, the school gave him As and Bs and put him on the honor roll — blatantly inflating his grades so that the parents would be less likely to act on his substandard education. Right before he was set to graduate, the school disclosed that he wasn’t going to get an actual diploma. Rather, he was going to receive a “Certificate of Completion." The parents were not informed of that at any point in the child’s education.
During litigation, the core issue of the lawsuit has turned into whether the Perez family even had a right to sue under the ADA — considering that they had settled under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It’s not uncommon for statutes to require that a party exhaust its options under one law before seeking an alternative means for relief. The IDEA has such a claim-exhaustion requirement; it mandates that a claim has to be advanced to exhaustion under the IDEA before ADA violations could be remedied.
Perez is somewhat of a continuation of another Supreme Court case called Fry v. Napoleon Community School District. In that case, another Michigan family sued under the ADA before exhausting their IDEA claim. When the Supreme Court was considering Fry, it was widely expected that the justices would answer the question of claim exhaustion under the IDEA before suing under the ADA. The court, however, did not address that question.
So here we are. This as-yet undecided case has the potential to change the way parents and their attorneys deal with school districts that are failing at their jobs. There are a number of nuances to explore, which is what our next post will delve into.
Marc Gottlieb
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