Edu-Ca

The plaintiffs in these consolidated appeals are local educational agencies in California — one a school district, the other a county office of education. (For ease of reference, we will refer to both of them as school districts.) In separate, unrelated actions, they sued the California Department of Education in federal court. They allege that, in resolving disputes between parents and school districts, such as the disputes that led to these actions, the Department routinely violates certain procedural requirements imposed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and its implementing regulations. The school districts seek a declaration that the challenged practices are unlawful and an injunction forbidding their use in resolving future disputes. In both cases, the district courts dismissed the actions with prejudice on the ground that Congress did not grant school districts the right to sue state agencies for violating procedural requirements imposed by the IDEA.

The details underlying each lawsuit are not important for our purposes, so we provide just a brief description here. In both cases, the parents of a disabled student filed a complaint against…