A.C. v. Los Angeles Unified School District

Disability Rights Advocates and Learning Rights Law Center filed suit to challenge an administrative law judge’s ruling that let a major school district off the hook for failing to ensure provision of special education services to a young student at one of its charter schools.

After the plaintiff was wrongly exited from special education at one of Los Angeles Unified School District’s charter schools he brought administrative claims against LAUSD. He included claims against LAUSD, as the responsible local education agency, because LAUSD’s actions, documents, and communications clearly identified it as the entity responsible for ensuring that student receives appropriate special education services. Despite this, the Administrative Law Judge erroneously found after an eleventh-hour motion from LAUSD – a motion that represented an abrupt reversal of LAUSD’s earlier representations in the case and to the student’s parent – that LAUSD was not a responsible agency. As a result, the ALJ dismissed LAUSD from the case, leaving this student with no recourse or available remedies against the responsible district in this matter.

DRA and co-counsel brought this case to challenge this ruling which leaves parents of children with disabilities at the mercy of a legal shell game through which responsible school districts evade ultimate responsibility for charter students with disabilities in their district.