LEGAL ISSUES
Rowley at 40: A Retrospective on the IDEA
By Charles J. Russo, JD, EdD This year
commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Rowley v. Board of Education of the Hendrick Hudson Central School District, its
first case reviewing the now IDEA.
T
he Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education ban- ning racial segregation in public elementary and secondary schools was a watershed moment in the history of equal educational opportunities in the United States. Brown thus served as the catalyst leading to significant changes in schooling, such as the adoption of both the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, reautho- rized as the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015; and Title IX of the Education Amend- ments of 1972, mandating gender equity in programs receiving federal financial assistance.
A year later, Section 504 of the Rehabili-
tation Act of 1973 became law, followed in 1975 by the Education for Handicapped Children Act, now the Individuals with Dis- abilities Education Act (IDEA). This year, 2022, commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s deci- sion in Rowley v. Board of Education of the Hendrick Hudson Central School District (1982), its first case reviewing the now IDEA. It is important for school business officials and other education leaders to be knowledgeable on the status of the IDEA because—based on the most recent federal data—14% of American students qualify for services under it (NCES 2021).
Qualifying for the IDEA
To qualify for IDEA services, students must meet four requirements: 1. They must be between the ages of 3 and 21; students are treated as being 21 until the end of the academic year in which they turn 21.
2. They must qualify as a “child with a disability. According to the IDEA, this means a child with “intellectual
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disabilities, hearing impairments (includ- ing deafness), speech or language impair- ments, visual impairments (including blindness), serious emotional disturbance (referred to in this chapter as “emotional disturbance”), orthopedic impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairments, or specific learning disabilities.”
3. They must need special education, mean- ing a “free appropriate public education,” or FAPE, in the “least restrictive environ- ment,” directed by the contents of indi- vidualized education programs (IEPs).
4. They must need related services, such as speech-language pathology and audi- ology services, interpreting services, psychological services, physical and occu- pational therapy, social work services, school nurse services designed to enable children to receive FAPEs, and counseling services.
Moreover, under the IDEA’s “zero-reject” approach, educators must serve all chil- dren with disabilities, regardless of cost (Timothy W. v. Rochester, N.H., School District 1989a, 1989b). At the same time, the IDEA provides students and their par- ents with extensive substantive and pro- cedural due protections, such as rights to due process hearings to resolve disputes resulting in a myriad of litigation. Having revised the IDEA in 1986, 1990, 1997, and 2004, congressional reauthorization is now long overdue.
Supreme Court Cases and the IDEA
This section reviews, in largely chrono- logical order, the cases the Supreme Court has resolved under the IDEA, beginning with Rowley.
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