Judicial Appeal of Due Process Hearing Rulings: The Extent and Direction of Decisional Change

Abstract

Extending the scope of two exploratory single-state studies, this empirical analysis determined the extent and direction of the outcome change from the impartial hearing officer (IHO) decision to the final court decision for a national sample of cases under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. Based on a random sample of 116 published court decisions from 1998 through 2016, the authors identified the rulings for “issue categories,” such as eligibility, free appropriate public education, and tuition reimbursement, in the final court decision and, via its published opinion, the preceding adjudicative levels down to the IHO. The primary finding for the 183 issue category rulings was that 70% had only slight or no change from the IHO to the final court level. Other findings included the following: (a) the net change was higher for states with a second administrative tier, which is a review officer, than for those with only the single tier of an IHO; (b) the net change was also higher for cases reaching the appellate rather than only the trial court level; and (c) the most frequent issue categories were free appropriate public education (55%) and tuition reimbursement (18%), both with a slight net outcome change in the district’s direction.