Publications

Greetings, Court Fans!

This week, the Court heard argument in a pair of interesting trademark cases: Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International (No. 21-1043), which asks whether U.S. trademark law applies to conduct in foreign countries; and Jack Daniel’s Properties v. VIP Products (No. 22-148), addressing just how much the First Amendment protects dog-poop jokes at the expense of a famous consumer brand. But on the decisions front, things were a bit quieter: In the sole decision of the week (and only the seventh signed opinion of the term), a unanimous Court held that children suing their school for money damages under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) do not first need to exhaust their remedies under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Read on for our summary of Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools (No. 21-887).

Perez, who is deaf, attended various public schools in Michigan’s Sturgis Public School District. Over the years, Sturgis provided Perez with a series of aides, who were supposed to translate classroom instruction into sign language for him. But Perez and his parents alleged these aides were unqualified or just skipped class. Over the years, that loss of learning added up, so much that Perez was no longer on track to graduate from high school.

Fed up, Perez and his family filed a complaint with Michigan’s Department of Education, alleging that Sturgis had failed to fulfill its duties under the IDEA to provide a free and appropriate public education tailored to Perez’s needs. The parties soon reached a settlement, with Sturgis agreeing to provide forward-looking relief, such as additional schooling. After that IDEA complaint was settled, though, Perez and his family sued Sturgis in federal court under the ADA, seeking backward-looking compensatory damages for the district’s alleged discrimination against him. Sturgis argued that the suit was barred, because Perez had not exhausted all the IDEA’s mechanisms for resolving his claims (remember, he had settled his IDEA complaint without pursuing all possible remedies under the IDEA). Bound by prior Sixth Circuit precedent, the District Court agreed, dismissing his suit, and the Sixth Circuit affirmed. But because other courts of appeals had concluded exhaustion isn’t required in this context, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the conflict.

The Court unanimously reversed in a decision by Justice Gorsuch. He began with the text of the IDEA’s determinative provision, 20 U.S.C. 1415. It specifies that “[n]othing in [the IDEA] shall be construed to restrict” individuals’ ability to seek “remedies” under the ADA or any other federal law protecting the rights of children with disabilities. But the statute then qualifies that general rule by stating that “[b]efore the filing of a civil action” under any of those other laws “seeking relief that is also available” under the IDEA, a plaintiff must complete the IDEA’s remedial process, which Perez concededly had not done.

The parties disagreed on what exactly that second clause means. On Perez’s view, exhaustion is required only if the federal suit seeks relief—meaning remedies—thatthe IDEA also provides. Perez wasn’t doing that, because his ADA suit sought compensatory damages only, which aren’t available under the IDEA. Sturgis argued that the second clause bars any suit seeking relief for “underlying harm” that the IDEA can address. Because the IDEA exists precisely to address the issues Perez was complaining about in his ADA suit—Perez’s lack of an adequate education due to Sturgis’s failure to accommodate his disability—Sturgis contended Perez needed to bring the IDEA process to its conclusion before he could seek relief for that same harm under the ADA.

Gorsuch concluded that Perez had the better understanding of the IDEA’s exhaustion requirement. He started with the first clause, which creates the general rule that the IDEA shouldn’t be construed to limit the remedies of other statutes. While the second clause created a carve-out to that general rule, that carve-out applied only if the suit was seeking “relief” also provided by the IDEA. While one might understand “relief” to mean something like “addressing a problem,” many statutes treat that word as synonymous with “remedies,” thus picking up the theme in the first clause. In the context of this particular statutory scheme, Justice Gorsuch thought that’s how ordinary people would read it: The carve-out thus applies only if a suit seeks relief of the same type the IDEA provides. With that plain-text analysis out of the way, Gorsuch quickly brushed aside various policy arguments Sturgis offered in favor of exhaustion, saying those concerns were better addressed by Congress. Thus, Perez’s suit for damages can proceed, because it seeks relief of a type that the IDEA doesn’t offer.

Dave and Tadhg