Last June, this blog covered Cruz v. Banks, 134 F.4th 687, 125 LRP 12165 (2d Cir. Apr. 15, 2025), certified question accepted, No. 64, 2025 WL 1439661 (N.Y. May 20, 2025) – a fight over whether the New York City Education Department offered a free, appropriate public education (FAPE) to a student with cerebral palsy, a visual impairment, a seizure disorder, and scoliosis when it recommended a 12:1:4 classroom at Horan Public School. The parent preferred iBrain private school. The recommendation also broke from the prior year’s proposed individualized education program (IEP), which had called for a 6:1:1 class in a specialized public school.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) defines FAPE to require that the education “meet the standards of the State educational agency.” 20 U.S.C. § 1401(9)(B). After clearing away other issues, the Second Circuit decided that whether the 12:1:4 IEP delivered FAPE turned on a question of state law that the New York courts had not yet answered. The court flagged the friction between two provisions of N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 8 § 200.6(h)(4): subsection (ii)(a) caps classes at six for “students whose management needs are determined to be highly intensive, and requiring a high degree of individualized attention and intervention,” while subsection (iii) caps classes at twelve for “students with severe multiple disabilities, whose programs consist primarily of habilitation and treatment.” Whether courts should defer to the agency’s reading of that tension, the court added, was itself a question for the state court. So it certified the question: “When a student is covered by more than one class size regulation under § 200.6(h)(4), do the varying restrictions serve as distinct requirements that must be independently fulfilled or as a list of class size options from which the DOE may pick?” 134 F.4th at 698-99.
In February, the New York Court of Appeals answered. Cruz v. Banks, No. 1, 2026 WL 436354, at *1, 126 LRP 3907 (N.Y. Feb. 17, 2026), held that section 200.6(h)(4) “sets forth a list of mutually exclusive alternatives” for class sizes and staffing in special education classes. A student’s committee on special education (CSE), the equivalent in New York State of an IEP team, the court said, must therefore pick the listed alternative that best meets the student’s individual needs. The court described section 6(h) as supplying a default — a maximum class size of 15, or in some cases 12, for students who need a self-contained setting — with four exceptions layered on top.
The first exception, in section 200.6(h)(4)(i), caps class size at 12 for students whose management needs interfere with instruction enough to require an additional adult, with one or more supplementary school personnel assigned. The second, section 200.6(h)(4)(ii)(a), caps class size at six for students with highly intensive management needs requiring a high degree of individualized attention, again with supplementary personnel. The third, section 200.6(h)(4)(ii)(b), caps class size at eight for students with intensive management needs requiring a significant degree of individualized attention, with the same staffing add-on. The fourth, section 200.6(h)(4)(iii), caps class size at 12 for students with severe multiple disabilities whose programs consist primarily of habilitation and treatment, with a staff-to-student ratio of one to three.
On the text alone, the court said, the fourth exception could be read as an alternative to the first three or as an additional requirement piled onto them. 2026 WL 436354, at *4. Structure pointed the other way. Reading the fourth exception as cumulative would force schools to run not only the five configurations the regulation expressly contemplates, but also additional classrooms in 6:1+(3:1) and 8:1+(3:1) setups for students who fell under both the fourth exception and either the second or the third. The court found it unlikely that the agency had quietly required those more resource-intensive configurations through the awkward intersection of list items. Students with severe multiple disabilities who primarily need habilitation and treatment, the kind of students contemplated by the fourth exception, likely have intensive or highly intensive management needs. If the State Education Department had actually wanted those students placed mainly in 6:1+(3:1) or 8:1+(3:1) classrooms, the court reasoned, it would have said so, rather than writing a 12-person cap that would then apply to almost no one.
Regulatory history pulled in the same direction. Earlier versions of the rule had set special class requirements by disability classification, with ratios that ran from 18:1 to 5:1:1, and under that older regime the State DOE had unambiguously treated 12:1+(3:1) classrooms as an alternative for certain students rather than as an additional requirement. 2026 WL 436354, at *4. The 1982 amendments referred to the new needs-based options as mutually exclusive alternatives, and so did a draft version. The final 1982 amendments dropped the prior requirement that a student could be placed in a 12:1+(3:1) class only when the other options were unsuitable, but, the court said, nothing in the amendments’ history suggested the agency had stopped viewing the 12:1+(3:1) ratio as the regulation’s most supportive alternative. The amendments simply reshaped existing “special class” categories into needs-based ones. Id. at *5. The current regulation tracks the 1982 version. A later amendment added the 8:1:1 ratio and raised the default cap from 12 to 15, and the court read those newer pieces as reinforcing the same reading: a list of mutually exclusive alternatives, with the CSE charged to use its knowledge and expertise to select the one that best serves a student’s individual needs.
Back in federal court, a brief per curiam opinion, Cruz v. Banks, 72 F.4th 208, 126 LRP 10055 (2d Cir. Apr. 7, 2026), applied the state court’s reading and affirmed the district court’s judgment upholding the 12:1:4 placement. Because O.F. had both severe multiple disabilities and highly intensive management needs, the Second Circuit said, he could properly be placed in either a 12:1:4 classroom under section 200.6(h)(4)(iii) or a 6:1:1 classroom under section 200.6(h)(4)(ii)(a). Id. at 209. The CSE’s pick was in line with state law. The state review officer (SRO) and the impartial hearing officer (IHO) had reasonably ruled the 12:1:4 placement appropriate for this student, and the Second Circuit would not disturb that finding.
What the post-certification picture leaves us with is the conclusion the opinions themselves draw: when a student is covered by more than one provision of section 200.6(h)(4), those provisions describe mutually exclusive options rather than overlapping demands; the CSE chooses among them based on what best meets the student’s individual needs; and where a student fits more than one provision, a placement that matches any of the available options is in accordance with state law. As the closing observation in the post puts it, IHOs working through class-size disputes for self-contained placements now have a definitive answer from the State’s highest court on how the regulation’s options are to be applied.