Porter ex rel. Porter v. Board of Trustees

The plaintiffs, a child with a disability and his parents, filed this suit under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”), 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq., and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 . They allege that the failure of the defendants to implement the directives of an order issued as a result of *1066 an IDEA due process hearing denied Dashiel Porter a free appropriate public education. The district court dismissed the complaint for want of jurisdiction, ruling that plaintiffs were required to exhaust California’s complaint resolution process before suit. We hold that (1) further exhaustion of California’s due process procedures enacted to comply with § 1415 of the IDEA would be futile, (2) the plaintiffs were not required to exhaust California’s complaint resolution procedure and (3) the district court' erred in dismissing the plaintiffs claims for prospective injunctive relief against the state defendants based on Eleventh Amendment immunity.

I.

A. Statutory and regulatory background.

In 1975, finding that more than half of the nation’s eight million children with disabilities were not receiving appropriate educational services, Congress appropriated federal funds for state…