Say what you will about the Roberts Court, but you cannot say it does not confront diffi cult issues that impact the everyday lives of most Americans. One of those issues presently before the Court is public education, specifi cally, the mandate expressed in the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act— the IDEA, 20 U.S.C. §§1401, et seq.—that all students receive a “free and appropriate public education.” See 20 U.S.C. §§ 1400(d)(1)(A); 1401(9). The key to the statute, as case law has confi rmed, is the mandate that local school districts fashion an “individualized education plan” (an IEP in education law parlance) for each disabled student. See, e.g., Sch. Comm. of Burlington v. Dep’t of Educ., 471 U.S. 359, 368 (1985); 20 US.C. §§ 1401(14), 1414(d).

The IDEA has been the books for more than three decades. Although the Warren Court declared a generation ago that education is “perhaps the most important function of state and local governments,” Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 493 (1954), the Supreme Court has not spoken much about the parameters of the requirement that local schools districts provide a FAPE to disabled students.

Originally published the California Lawyer.