In Forest Grove School District v. T.A.,(2009), the U.S. Supreme Court held that children need not have first received special education from a school district in order to seek the remedy of tuition reimbursement.

Over the past several years, there has been much debate among those involved in special education litigation over whether one of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s (IDEA) most common remedies, tuition reimbursement, is available to parents when their child has not previously received special education services in the public schools.

Although initially not mentioned in the IDEA, tuition reimbursement first became a remedy available to parents many years ago through a decision by the United States Supreme Court in School Comm. of Burlington v. Department of Educ. of Mass., 471 U.S. 359 (1985). In response to the Court’s decision in Burlington, Congress amended the IDEA in 1997 to incorporate the remedy of tuition reimbursement. Following the passage of the 1997 Amendments to the IDEA, public schools began arguing that the tuition reimbursement language in the statute now required that a student receive special education services in the public schools before his parents could unilaterally remove him or her to a private school and seek tuition reimbursement from their public school. If accepted, such an argument would prevent parents of newly identified special education student’s from rejecting an initial program and placement proposed by their school district and placing their child in a private school at public expense, regardless of whether the public school met its obligation to provide the student with an appropriate program.

Although the federal courts and state administrative bodies have been split over such a limitation to tuition reimbursement, the United States Supreme Court, in Forest Grove School District v. T.A., 557 U.S. ____ (2009), recently put an end to the debate. The Court found that the original requirements for tuition reimbursement as outlined in Burlington - i.e., the public school program is inappropriate, the private program is appropriate, and the equities in the case favor reimbursement - remain unchanged by the language in the 1997 amendments to the IDEA. As such, so long as the Burlington requirements are met, the IDEA authorizes reimbursement for private school tuition regardless of whether the child in question previously received special education services through the public school.