Journal article
Rowley Comes Home to Roost: Judicial Review of Autism Special Education Disputes
UC Davis Journal of Juvenile Law & Policy, Vol.9, pp.217-439
01 Jul 2005
Abstract
Introduction Although the nation's law guaranteeing special educational services for children with disabilities was enacted nearly 30 years ago in 1975, cases under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 1 (IDEA) have only occasionally reached the Supreme Court. One of those seminal cases, Board of Education v. Rowley, 2 set up and applied the principles of deference to the local school district's expertise, and in particular its choice of a teaching methodology. Rowley also stressed the need for courts to give "due weight" to state administrative decisions when reviewing special education disputes. 3 The principles of restraint and deference first articulated in Rowley have existed in tension with IDEA's mandate that a child in need of special education receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE). 4 To accomplish this mandate, IDEA provides a statutory scheme that makes parents partners in the planning of an appropriate educational plan for their child and confers extensive due process rights, culminating in federal court review. 5 The lower courts have grappled with these inherent tensions in reviewing disputes under IDEA. In the decades after the Rowley decision, the courts have developed standards for review of state hearing decisions that elaborate upon the deference and "due weight" constraints upon review that were emphasized in Rowley. Recently, cases involving the education of autistic children have arisen with more frequency. For several reasons, these cases present a particularly timely and dramatic prism through which to examine these aspects of IDEA. First, autism appears to be ...
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Details
- Title
- Rowley Comes Home to Roost: Judicial Review of Autism Special Education Disputes
- Creators
- Terry Jean Seligmann
- Publication Details
- UC Davis Journal of Juvenile Law & Policy, Vol.9, pp.217-439
- Publisher
- The Regents of the University of California
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- [Retired Faculty]
- Identifiers
- 991021862277304721