With uprisings against police brutality in the headlines, what roles can attorneys play to address injustice? In December 2020, Attorney Heather J. Hulit published an article in the Legal Intelligencer exploring the vital roles that lawyers can play to serve the public good while acknowledging our limits. From ensuring that the adversarial process works when one [...]
Attorney Heather J. Hulit published an article in the Legal Intelligencer arguing that there is a dual problem with the identification of minority students for special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Policymakers have long recognized that minority students are inappropriately over-represented in special education, a problem known as "disproportionality" that the [...]
Parents of children with disabilities and their advocates pushed Secretary DeVos to maintain IDEA obligations for states during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yesterday, we won. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, enacted March 27, 2020, gave the Secretary 30 days to issue a report to Congress with her “recommendations on any additional waivers [...]
If your child receives special education services, she is protected by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The IDEA is a federal law that was passed in 1975 “to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet [...]
This month, Berney & Sang secured over $135,000 of compensatory education for a parent and child in federal court. The case, Jada H. v. Pennsylvania Department of Education, arose under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The child was denied a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) while attending a charter school, but the charter school [...]
Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled for a parent represented by Berney & Sang in an Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) case. The case is Rena C. v. Colonial School District. This is the second Third Circuit victory that Berney & Sang has secured for parents in the [...]
David J. Berney and Kevin Golembiewski filed an amicus brief today in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA), the Education Law Center, New Jersey Special Education Practitioners, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities. The brief supports the appellants in K.D. et al. v. Downingtown [...]
A child's Individualized Education Program (IEP) is the cornerstone of his special education programming. An IEP is a document that identifies the special education placement and services that a child with disabilities requires to make educational progress. IEPs are viewed as contracts between schools and parents; schools are obliged to comply with a child's IEP and [...]
This article was originally published in The Legal Intelligencer on October 16, 2017. Fee shifting is critical to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The IDEA promises all children with disabilities a free and appropriate public education, but absent the IDEA’s fee-shifting provision, many parents would be unable to enforce that promise. Parents raising [...]
