## Facts

- Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Peninsula School District developed an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for D.P., a seven-year-old student with moderate autism.
- Because of his disability, D.P. at times bit, scratched, yelled, refused to work, and had difficulty staying on task.
- The IEP included behavioral interventions, including “time out” in a “safe room.”
- The safe room was a five-by-six-foot room inside the special-education classroom.
- In response to D.P.’s classroom behavior, D.P.’s teacher locked him in the safe room on multiple occasions with no adult inside the room.
- On several occasions while locked in the room, D.P. removed his clothes and urinated and defecated on himself.
- D.P. began showing anxious behaviors and experienced emotional and scholastic setbacks.
- Windy Payne, D.P.’s mother, repeatedly complained to the district about D.P. being left alone in the safe room with a closed door and asked that D.P. be moved to another teacher’s class.
- After the district refused those requests, Payne sought mediation; mediation failed.
- Payne withdrew D.P. from the district and began homeschooling him.
- Payne did not request an IDEA due-process hearing or otherwise complete IDEA administrative procedures.
- Payne sued the district in federal court, alleging that the safe-room practices caused regression in D.P.’s communicative and sensory functioning, diminished academic abilities, and continuing emotional trauma, and she sought damages through federal civil-rights theories and related claims.

## Issues

1. Whether 20 U.S.C. § 1415(l) required Payne to exhaust IDEA administrative procedures before filing federal claims seeking compensatory damages for alleged misconduct occurring during implementation of D.P.’s IEP.
2. Whether requesting only money damages (a remedy not typically awarded through IDEA administrative proceedings) avoids the IDEA exhaustion requirement when the alleged injuries stem from the provision of special-education services.
3. Whether the district court properly declined to keep supplemental jurisdiction over remaining state-law claims after dismissing the federal claims for failure to exhaust.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of Payne’s federal claims based on failure to exhaust IDEA administrative remedies.
- The court treated exhaustion as required because the claims, in substance, challenged conduct occurring in the delivery of special-education services and implementation of the IEP’s behavioral interventions.
- The court rejected the argument that pleading only compensatory damages eliminates exhaustion where the IDEA process could address the alleged educational injuries through available administrative remedies (such as changes to services or other educational relief).
- The court affirmed the district court’s decision to decline supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims after the federal claims were dismissed.
- The court noted uncertainty, after *Jones v. Bock*, about whether IDEA exhaustion is jurisdictional or an affirmative defense, but did not decide the question on the record presented.

## Legal Principles

- IDEA § 1415(l) requires exhaustion of IDEA administrative procedures before filing a civil action under other federal laws when the suit is, in substance, seeking relief for harms the IDEA process can address.
- Courts examine the substance of the complaint—whether it concerns the provision of a free appropriate public education (FAPE) or implementation of an IEP—rather than the plaintiff’s labels or choice of cause of action.
- A plaintiff generally cannot bypass IDEA exhaustion by requesting only compensatory damages if the alleged wrong arose from special-education programming and the administrative process could provide meaningful educational remedies.
- When all federal claims are dismissed at an early stage, a district court may decline supplemental jurisdiction over state-law claims under ordinary supplemental-jurisdiction principles.

## Conclusion

*Payne v. Peninsula School District* held that a parent who alleged injury from a school’s use of an IEP-authorized “safe room” had to exhaust IDEA administrative procedures before bringing federal damages claims, because the allegations centered on the delivery of special-education services and related educational harms; the court therefore affirmed dismissal of the unexhausted federal claims and the district court’s refusal to retain supplemental jurisdiction over state-law claims.


Payne v. Peninsula School District, 589 F.3d 1123 (2010)