Summary of 4th Circuit Decision and Supporting Briefs
"...Congress was aware that school systems might have an advantage in administrative proceedings brought by parents to challenge IEPs [Individualized Education Programs]. To avoid this problem, Congress provided a number of procedural safeguards for parents, but assignment of the burden of proof is not one of them. Because Congress took care in specifying procedural protections necessary to implement the policy goals of the Act, we decline to go further, at least insofar as the burden of proof is concerned. Accordingly, we hold that parents who challenge an IEP have the burden of proof in an administrative hearing..."
Decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
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"...Petitioners [for Schaffer] ask this Court to adopt an extraordinary rule imposing the burden of proof on school districts in any hearing under IDEA, including those initiated by parents. That rule would impose an additional, unstated burden on local school districts implementing an underfunded federal mandate—a burden that Congress has not seen fit to impose on its own federal agencies."
Montgomery County Public Schools Brief to the Supreme Court
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"...When the school is the complainant at the administrative hearing, it should bear the burden of proof. But where, as here, parents initiate the hearing, seek relief, and allege that school officials failed to comply with their legal obligations in formulating the IEP, that burden should rest with the parents."
Brief to the Supreme Court for the United States by the
Office of the Solicitor General, the Department of Justice,
and the Department of Education
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"...Courts traditionally have adopted two fundamental principles in dealing with governmental and administrative agencies, including boards of education: (1) the presumption of correctness, i.e., that public agencies act lawfully and correctly, unless proven otherwise; and (2) deference in matters concerning their particular expertise. Teachers and other dedicated school-based professionals who, along with parents, devise IEPs for disabled children should be entitled to the presumption that they have complied with the law and acted in the best interests of the children entrusted to their care—not that they are 'guilty until proven innocent.'"
National School Boards Association Brief
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"...[Always placing] the burden of proof on schools...[would increase] both the volume of litigation and the expense of that litigation. As a result, school resources -- both direct costs and the time that teachers would otherwise spend in the classroom -- would be drained from instruction and other educational services and pumped into the adversarial process. That result benefits no one, least of all the children most in need of special education services."
Brief to the Supreme Court for the Council of Great City Schools, American Association of School Administrators, National Education Association, Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, National Association of Elementary School Principals, Public School Superintendents' Association of Maryland, and Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents
Read Brief (310K PDF)
"...While the concept of 'fairness' is one which everyone can subscribe, there are many policy dimensions to the concept of 'fairness.' Congress, with its powers to appropriate federal assistance to the States, is best equipped to consider all such dimensions on a national level. Congress did so with great care when establishing the detailed procedural protections in IDEA. And States, if they disagree with the legislative judgment of Congress, are fully able to add further protections of their educational statutes."
Brief to the Supreme Court for the Virginia School Boards Association, Minnesota School Boards Association, Texas Association of School Boards Legal Assistance Fund, Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, Kansas Association of School Boards, and Illinois Association of School Boards
Read Brief (242K PDF)
"...First, and quite obviously, placing the burden upon the school system, rather than the parents, makes it more difficult to defeat unreasonable demands of parents seeking to abuse the system, needlessly increasing the costs to the states of educating disabled children. In this case, for example, there was evidence that the parents would likely have refused any public school IEP because of their predetermined decision to send their child to private school, and simply have the state pay for that private education."
Brief for the Attorneys General for the States of Hawaii, Alaska,
and Oklahoma, and the Territory of Guam
Read Brief (3,011K PDF)
Updated October 4, 2005 | Maintained by Web Services
