In a case decided on February 11, 2020 by the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, Camden Vicinage, the Eastampton School District (“District”) successfully dismissed a parent’s lawsuit brought under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”) on the basis that it was filed beyond the two-year statute of limitations. In McLean v. Eastampton School District, the parent of a special education student initiated a due process petition in August 2018 against the District alleging that an individualized education program (“IEP”) developed by the District in June 2016 failed to provide the student with a free appropriate public education (“FAPE”).
The District successfully argued before the Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) that the parent’s due process petition was time-barred because the parent filed it more than two years after the District proposed the June 2016 IEP. The ALJ found that the IDEA’s two-year statute of limitations began running on the date the parent “knew or should have known” of a FAPE violation. In this case, the parent warned the District as early as March 2016 that she believed the student was not receiving a FAPE and that she would be seeking tuition reimbursement. The parent also rejected the IEP in June 2016.
The parent appealed the ALJ’s decision to the District Court. In affirming the ALJ’s dismissal of the parent’s case, the District Court explained that the federal courts within the Third Circuit “have generally focused on clear action or inaction by a school district sufficient to alert a reasonable parent that the child would not be appropriately accommodated.” In the case at hand, the District Court determined that by June 2016, the parent knew that the District was not providing the educational services that the parent believed to be a FAPE. Therefore, the statute of limitations began to run in June 2016, and the parent’s filing of her lawsuit in August 2018 was time-barred – even if she was two months late.
