Manifestation Determinations Under the New Individuals With Disabilities Education Act

This article provides an update of a previous analysis of the case law concerning manifestation determinations culminating in the revised pertinent provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 2004. Specifically, the update consists of a synthesis of the legislative history, Office of Special Education Programs interpretations, and published hearing and review officer and court decisions that provide legal guidance as to the application of the manifestation provisions of IDEA 2004 and its 2006 regulations. The results reveal that thus far (a) the hearing and review officer and court decisions applying the new, causality criteria have continued at a higher but still modest rate (i.e., frequency per year) as the case law under the prior criteria; (b) the conduct in question remained focused primarily on drugs and, in various forms, violence; (c) specific learning disability and other health impairment (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) continued to predominate as the disabilities at issue, but the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder became more frequent than in the prior case law; (d) the only new notable decisional factor was burden of proof; (e) the outcomes of the new case law has, with an unexpected but limited reduction, continued to predominate in favor of determinations that the child’s disciplined conduct was not a manifestation of the child’s disability; and (f) procedural issues have played a limited role in terms of reversing such district manifestation determinations.