Can the State Be Sued? IDEA §1403 — Education Across the States

It is one of the shortest sections in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the one a family is most likely to depend on without knowing it. Section 1403 of Title 20, covered in today’s IDEA, Section by Section episode, reads in subsection (a): “A State shall not be immune under the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution of the United States from suit in federal court for a violation of this chapter.” Subsection (b) adds that remedies against a state — at law and in equity — are available to the same extent as in a suit against any other public entity, and subsection (c) applies the rule to violations occurring in whole or in part after October 30, 1990.

Congress wrote that sentence because the Supreme Court had required it to be unmistakable. In Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. 223 (1989), Pennsylvania father Russell Muth sought tuition reimbursement, and a court had held the district and the Commonwealth jointly responsible. Pennsylvania invoked the Eleventh Amendment, and the Court held the IDEA as then written did not abrogate state immunity. Congress answered in 1990. After Seminole Tribe limited Congress’s Article I abrogation power, courts sustained §1403 on waiver: the IDEA is a spending law, and 34 C.F.R. §300.177 restates the condition — a state accepting Part B funds relinquishes that immunity. The Third Circuit in A.W. v. Jersey City and the Fifth Circuit, en banc, in Pace v. Bogalusa (2005) agreed.

What the section does not do matters as much. Suable is not the same as liable: a family still must prove an actual IDEA violation and can still lose on the merits. Section 1403 creates no new claim and no new remedy — compensatory education, orders to provide services, reimbursement where the law allows it, and fees for a prevailing parent come from the rest of the Act, above all §1415, and the IDEA offers no general damages award. And the road to federal court still ordinarily runs through the required administrative process first.

For New Hampshire, the episode bridges to RSA chapter 186-C and the Ed 1100 rules: the state investigates complaints within 60 calendar days, provides the hearing system, and — if its own handling violates the Act — is not beyond federal-court review. That background is why a state complaint decision is written as a binding legal document with findings and ordered corrective action, not as an informal letter.

Takeaway: Treat every state complaint decision, prior written notice, and corrective action plan as a court-readable record — because it is one. Section 1403 does not decide cases; it guarantees the state’s work can be examined by a court if the administrative process fails.

Sources: 20 U.S.C. §1403; 34 C.F.R. §300.177; Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. 223 (1989); Pace v. Bogalusa City School Board, 403 F.3d 272 (5th Cir. 2005) — as covered in today’s episode, which publishes its sources in its episode description.