Decisional Remedies for Procedural Violations Under the IDEA: Lessons From and For the State Complaint Process

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) provides two alternative decisional avenues for dispute resolution. The primary alternative is an impartial due process hearing (DPH), which is an adjudicative administrative mechanism. The other alternative, which is specified in the regulations of the IDEA and which receives far less attention than DPH in the legal literature, is the investigative administrative mechanism referred to as state complaint procedures (SCP). This brief empirical analysis is intended to provide lessons from and for SCP in relation to the remedial stage of DPHs in addressing procedural issues under the IDEA. The first part of this article provides an overview of (a) these two decisional mechanisms and (b) the procedural aspect of the IDEA. The second part presents an analysis of a sampling of SCP decisions specific to procedural issues under the IDEA. The final part discusses the findings of this analysis with a focus on (a) importing the extensive SCP use of purely procedural orders (PPOs) for rectifying violations to the corresponding remedial stage of DPHs and, reciprocally, (b) considering more explicitly the application of the DPH two-step test.