School Leaders' Liability

Court Upholds Hearing Officer’s Decision and Grants Full Attorneys’ Fees After School Misses IDEA Appeal Deadline    
A.L.L., A.L. v. Laboratory Charter School, 2025 WL 3269941 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 24, 2025)

The parent, A.L., filed a special education due process complaint against Laboratory Charter School, alleging the school failed to provide her child, A.L.L., with a free appropriate public education (FAPE) during the student’s third and fourth grade years and related Extended School Years. Following a two-day hearing, the hearing officer found in favor of the parent, agreeing the school violated the child’s right to a FAPE, and awarded compensatory education in the amount of five hours for each school day the school was in session during this time period.

Three months later, A.L. and her child filed a complaint in federal court, asserting they were the “prevailing party” at due process for purposes of the IDEA, and sought an award of reasonable attorney’s fees and costs. In its answer, the school raised affirmative defenses and asked the court to overturn the hearing officer’s decision in its entirety.

One day after the plaintiffs filed their federal complaint—and one day past the 90-day deadline under IDEA § 1415(i)(2)(B)—the school separately filed its own complaint in federal court in the nature of an appeal from the hearing officer’s decision. The school affirmatively asked the court to overturn the hearing officer’s decision, contending it did not deny the child a FAPE and asserting the hearing officer erred in finding there was a denial of a FAPE. The court promptly granted the plaintiffs’ Rule 12 motion to dismiss the school’s complaint because it was untimely. 

The court directed the parties to confer on a briefing schedule concerning the plaintiffs’ request for prevailing party fees and costs, and the court thereafter issued a scheduling order. The plaintiffs filed a motion for fees and costs. Rather than responding substantively to the plaintiffs’ motion, however, the school instead filed its own motion seeking leave of the court to amend its answer and, specifically, to include a counterclaim to challenge the validity of the hearing officer’s decision—effectively the same affirmative relief the school sought on appeal. The school also asked the court to defer ruling on the plaintiffs’ motion as premature.

In resolving the competing motions, the court first denied the school’s motion and its request to amend its answer. In rejecting the school’s arguments, the court noted the school’s intended counterclaim was essentially a verbatim copy of the amended complaint it had filed in its untimely appeal: “So, Lab Charter asks us to permit it to file, as an amended answer, exactly what it filed as its amended complaint in its unsuccessful appeal before us…” The court found it would be futile to allow the amendment under the circumstances: “We dismissed Lab Charter’s appeal … under Rule 12(b)(6) because it was untimely. It thus would be futile to permit Lab Charter’s counterclaims—which we already dismissed in the other case—to move forward in this case.”

The court also granted the plaintiffs’ motion, concluding they were the “prevailing party” under the IDEA for purposes of their affirmative claims. In its reasoning, the court once again highlighted the school’s untimely appeal from the hearing officer’s decision: “Lab Charter lost its opportunity to seek modified de novo review of the administrative record below by failing to timely appeal the hearing officer’s decision. Accordingly, we are faced with a situation where we are adjudicating only whether petitioners are entitled to attorneys’ fees and costs arising out of their IDEA claims, but we are not doing so in the context of a … substantive challenge to the administrative decision.” 

The court went on to state: “This [hearing officer] decision is final and, because Lab Charter did not timely appeal it, we cannot effectively override the statutorily imposed 90-day deadline by now conducting modified de novo review of the administrative record. At this point, the only question properly before us is what, if any, attorneys’ fees and costs should be awarded to petitioners.” The plaintiffs sought $164,173.84 in fees and costs incurred in the administrative due process hearing and in the two federal cases relating to that hearing. The court granted this request in its entirety: “Petitioners prevailed at the administrative due process proceeding, sought fees and costs related to their work from that proceeding, and defended their victory in that proceeding when Lab Charter attempted to appeal its outcome. All this work was reasonably expended in furtherance of the outcome achieved by petitioners.”

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