A boon to parents’ rights
on May 21, 2007 at 1:08 pm
In a victory of major proportions for parents who have disabled children of school age, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that parents have rights all of their own — enforceable by them in court — to assure that their child gets a free public education that fits the youngster’s special needs. The parents, under the Individuals with Disabilities Act, are full legal partners to the child and not just the guardians of the child’s own rights, the Court declared in a ruling written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. In going to court, the Court said, the parents may act as their own attorneys. All members of the Court joined at least part of the decision, but two Justices dissented on the broad new parental right recognized by the ruling. The case is Winkelman v. Parma City School District (05-983).
Taking a case that appeared to focus only on whether the parents’ could act as their child’s lawyer when a dispute over a proper educational program for the youngster went to court, the Court turned its decision into a broad finding of parental rights. A law that mandates “extensive parental involvement” in every stage of working out an educational plan for their disabled child does not shut them out of the process when “the time comes to file a civil” lawsuit, the Court said. The word “rights” in the Act, it added, “refers to the rights of parents as well as the rights of the child; otherwise, the grammatical structure would make no sense.”
The driving purpose of the law, is not just “to facilitate vindication of a child’s rights,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “It is not a novel proposition to say that parents have a recognized legal interest in the education and upbringing of their child,” the Justice added, citing the Court’s famous parental rights decisions in Pierce v. Society of Sisters.in 1925 and Meyer v. Nebraska in 1923. “Without question, a parent of a child with a disability has a particular and personal interest in fulfilling ‘our national policy of ensuring equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities.'”
In practical terms, the ruling means that parents of a disabled youngster are not limited to taking part in review within the school system of a child’s educational needs or to recovering their own money that they had paid to send their child to a private school because of the public schools’ failure to provide a proper, free education. Rather, it means that they also have an entitlement all of their own to an adequate educational plan in the public school system — an entitlement that they may enforce directly in court. “The status of parents as parents is not limited to matters that relate to procedure and cost recovery,” the Court said. “The adequacy of the educational program is, after all, the central issues in the litigation.”
The Court went on to rule that a parents’ lawsuit seeking to vindicate their own rights in court may not be dismissed because they are acting as their own attorneys in attacking a school’s plan for their child. “Parents enjoy rights under IDEA; and they are, as a result, entitled to prosecute IDEA claims on their own behalf,” the Court said. In light of that opportunity, the Court added, it did not have to decide whether parents could act as the attorney in court on behalf of their child, if they were not lawyers themselves.
Kennedy’s opinion was joined in full by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and by Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens.
Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, dissenting on the key point, concluding that parents do not have any independent right to sue to seek a more adequate educational plan for their disabled child. They should be allowed to sue acting as their own lawyer, the dissenters said, but only to seek reimbursement for any private school expenses they had incurred, or to enforce their procedural rights in the review of their child’s needs that takes place within the school system, local or statewide. Thus, Scalia wrote, they should not have a right to sue without a lawyer when they are want to challenge the adequacy of the schools’ proposed plan for their child.
The majority’s recognition of independent rights in the parents, regarding the adequacy of a plan, “sweeps far more broadly than the text [of IDEA] allows,” the dissenters said. That right, they contended, “obviously inheres in the child, for it is he who receives the education.” The parents have an interest in that education, but no right to it, under the law, Scalia wrote. “The text of the IDEA makes clear that parents have no right to the education itself.”
The case involved the parents and an eight-year-old boy, Jacob Winkelman. He and his parents, Jeff and Sandee, living in Parma. Beginning in July 2001, Jacob, who is autistic, attended pre-school at a special achievement center because he did not do well in the public pre-school program. In discussing an educational plan for the year 2003-2004, public school officials suggested that Jacob go to a regular elementary school, but be taught in a special education classroom.
The parents objecgted, saying the program would not be satisfactory because it did not offer occupational therapy for Jacob, had too little speech therapy, and no music therapy. In the meantime, they placed Jacob in Monarch School, which specializes in teaching austistic students. It cost them $56,000 a year, so they did not enroll him there for the 2004-2005 year, but rather taught him at home, with one to two hours a week at Monarch.
After the public elementary school plan was found adequate, the parents sued in federal court, but the District Court upheld the plan. The Winkelmans took the case on to the Sixth Circuit Court, which dismissed the lawsuit because the parents were acting as their own lawyer.
