In 2019, parents of 10 children with disabilities filed a lawsuit against the New Jersey Department of Education for taking too long to resolve a dispute over how their children were educated. On Friday, a federal district court judge ruled that their case could become a class action lawsuit. This could include an estimated 15,000 families who claim their students have suffered over the years due to administrative delays.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Noel L. Hillman allowed two groups of parents to proceed with class action lawsuits. Parents’ groups have called on the state’s Department of Education to fix its broken dispute resolution system for current and future students, and one group is calling for student justice. The long awaited past years.
As of 2018, the average time to resolve a case was 212 days, according to a New Jersey Special Education Practitioners report, but recently increased to an average of 9 months with requests from nearly 1,000 families. said the lawyer. Public hearing once a year.
Under the Federal Education for Persons with Disabilities Act, disputes between parents and school districts regarding the placement of special education students must be resolved within 45 days, not including deferrals, but the U.S. Department of Education issued a letter in 2019. published in 2016, stating: In grade 17, he had less than 5% of 1,300 due process complaints resolved on time in New Jersey.
Of the families that filed lawsuits, five have waited over 300 days for their cases to be resolved, and one has waited 791 days.
The Department of Education did not respond to messages seeking comment on Wednesday.
The judge also appointed John Lu and Associates, a special education law firm based in Princeton, to represent both classes.
“NJDOE’s due process system is systematically flawed,” said Rue. “That she ignores and routinely violates the 45-day rule, a rule that recognizes that time is of the essence when it comes to educating children.”
A shortage of administrative law judges is part of the backlog, Rue said. He added that the state agency that handles such cases, the Office of Administrative Law, was unable to estimate how many more judges would be needed to speed up the case. Although we allocated $6 million in our last budget to deal with processing, that money will not be specifically allocated to new administrative law judges in special education cases, as originally planned.
Several advocacy groups have joined the lawsuit, including the SPAN Parent Advocacy Network. New Jersey Children’s Advocate. Council of Parent Lawyers and Advocates. Disability Rights New Jersey; Education Law Center; New Jersey Special Education Practitioner; and Volunteer Lawyers for Justice.
In an earlier ruling that the lawsuit should go forward, Hillman said parents routinely follow federal laws designed to ensure that the system is “horribly broken,” and that the most vulnerable children continue to be prioritized. He said he made a “plausible allegation” that it was in violation. “
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To contact Tina Kelly: tkelley@njadvancemedia.com.
