By Sara Tussey. 113 Penn St. L. Rev 297.
Over the last twenty years, the United States courts of appeals, including the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, have struggled with the question of whether to award compensatory and punitive damages in IDEA cases. In 1995, the Third Circuit held, in W.B. v. Matula, that § 1983 can be used by parents and children seeking monetary damages for statutory violations of the IDEA. In the years following Matula, the United States courts of appeals were split evenly on this issue. In 2007, the Third Circuit revisited the Matula decision in A.W. v. Jersey City Public Schools. The court reversed its earlier holding and decided that § 1983 cannot be used in conjunction with the IDEA. The Third Circuit was the first federal court of appeals to explicitly overturn an earlier holding on the availability of § 1983 as a remedy for IDEA violations. This Comment will discuss the impact the Third Circuit has had on the availability of § 1983 remedies for IDEA violations . . . [keep reading]