Figueroa-Rivera v. Puerto Rico, No. CV 24-1357 (ADC), 2025 WL 2793079 (D.P.R., Sept. 30, 2025), tells a long story of conflict over services for a student with disabilities. At the center of the opinion is a narrower question about who must invoke due process when there is no individualized education program (IEP) to contest. The student had been enrolled with the Puerto Rico Department of Education (DOE) since 2012. After a privately obtained psychometric evaluation in April 2018 showed significant learning deficiencies, she was classified as a student with disabilities for the 2018-19 school year. Work on an IEP did not begin until January 2019. The May 20, 2019, IEP for the 2019-20 school year placed her in a regular classroom with accommodations but no specific services for her needs. Although she earned good grades, her parents were concerned that she was not retaining what she learned.
The IEP team met again on October 28, 2020, to review the 2020-21 IEP. The parents requested additional evaluations. A psychoeducational evaluation completed on December 30, 2020, was discussed and accepted at an IEP team meeting on January 26, 2021. The parents asked for daily individualized education and a differentiated strategy to address the student’s academic delays. They contended that the draft IEP did not include the evaluation’s recommendations for a smaller class and one-to-one teaching in the areas of deficit.
Meetings scheduled in May 2021 to prepare the 2021-22 IEP did not take place. With no IEP in place at the start of the school year, the parents placed the student in a private school and filed an administrative complaint. The hearing officer found that the DOE had failed to take the evaluation recommendations into account. The hearing officer ordered payment of private school tuition and an IEP team meeting before February 2022 for the 2021-22 school year. The meeting occurred, but no IEP was approved.
On May 16, 2022, the team developed an IEP for the 2022-23 school year, and the student attended two public schools. The IEP included transportation services, education assistants, and, after an amendment, a transportation assistant. On August 13, 2022, however, the DOE told the parents that transportation could not be provided. The parents filed a complaint with the Department of the Family over the lack of transportation. The school director then allegedly retaliated by filing a Department of the Family complaint against the parent for not taking the student to school. Both complaints were dismissed after the parties reached an agreement on transportation. On December 27, 2022, the parents filed another administrative complaint with the DOE seeking placement, transportation reimbursement, service assistance, and an IEP meeting. The parties settled. The student enrolled at Luis Lloréns Torres School and attended from mid-February through May 2023 in a regular classroom with a special education teacher providing one-to-one instruction in Spanish, English, and mathematics.
The IEP team met on May 31, 2023, to prepare the 2023-24 IEP, but the parties disagreed about whether another evaluation should be conducted. The parents later met with the Secretary of the DOE, and a proposal emerged for a temporary placement at Lysander Borrero Terry School. The parent, a librarian employed by the DOE, would be reassigned to work at that school. The proposal was not implemented after the Secretary resigned and the parent’s reassignment was rejected. More meetings followed. At the start of the 2023-24 school year, the student was not attending school. The parents said Luis Lloréns Torres lacked the resources to provide the small-group classroom ordered by the hearing officer and sought placement at Lysander Borrero Terry.
On September 5, 2023, the IEP team met again while the student remained out of school. The DOE offered placement at Lysander Borrero Terry in a reduced group of eight students, along with transportation, a transportation assistant, and classes at the Fine Arts School. The parties continued to disagree over the IEP. The parents wanted the student’s needs identified in the evaluation incorporated into the program. The DOE maintained that she should be placed in tenth grade with reasonable accommodations but without changes to the regular curriculum. At meetings on February 8 and February 20, 2024, the parties agreed to pre-place the student at Lysander Borrero Terry while discussions over the 2023-24 IEP continued. She would receive one-to-one education from a special education teacher, a service assistant, and transportation. No IEP was completed for that school year, and transportation was not actually provided until April 1, 2024. Another Department of the Family complaint was filed against the parent in April based on the student’s absences.
The DOE received another clinical psychological evaluation on March 15, 2024. It proposed a one-to-one teacher to address the student’s academic deficiencies. The parents asked the DOE to consider a psychoeducational evaluation by Dr. Karla Narváez, who recommended groups of six to eight students and a special education teacher to work on academic deficiencies. At a May 20, 2024, IEP meeting, the parties agreed to use Dr. Narváez’s evaluation and to meet again on June 5 to draft the 2024-25 IEP.
At the June 5, 2024, meeting, DOE representatives said they would work on an IEP with goals and objectives tied to the student’s age and corresponding grade level. The parents said the IEP needed to account for the student’s strengths and emotional needs, provide a permanent school placement, and include an evaluation for compensatory education. No IEP was approved. The parties disagreed about placing the student in tenth grade with a tenth-grade curriculum when her English, Spanish, and math skills did not match those of a tenth-grade student. When the lawsuit was filed on August 11, 2024, there was still no decision about where the student would attend school for 2024-25 or what services she would receive. No IEP had been written, and the student was not attending school.
The parents sued in district court. They sought injunctive relief providing a temporary placement at Lysander Borrero Terry and the Fine Arts School with specified services while an IEP was prepared. They also sought a writ staying the educational negligence proceedings against the parent, an order for an IEP meeting, compensatory education, and permanent relief. A magistrate judge facilitated an agreement for a temporary placement at Lysander Borrero Terry, held evidentiary hearings, and issued a report and recommendation on March 31, 2025. Both sides objected. On January 27, 2025, the parents informed the court that they had temporarily placed the student in a private school while an IEP was being prepared and requested reimbursement. They renewed their request for a preliminary injunction, and the court ordered an IEP meeting for October 1, 2025.
While considering the parents’ request for preliminary and other relief, the court also addressed the defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction based on failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The court concluded that most of the complaint, which alleged violations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), was subject to exhaustion. The parents could obtain most, if not all, of the requested relief through due process, and an administrative record would be beneficial. The court therefore found that futility did not apply. It also rejected irreparable injury and systemic violations as potential excuses, noting that the First Circuit had not recognized the latter.
The court reached a different conclusion on the parents’ claims that the DOE had a practice of failing to finalize proposed IEPs, keeping obsolete IEPs in place, and not using due process to validate its proposals. Those claims were not subject to exhaustion. The court explained:
[W]hen faced with the parents’ consistent rejection of an IEP proposal, and once it is evident that no consensus will be reached by the beginning of the school year, the DOE likely has the obligation under IDEA to submit its IEP proposal to the administrative process to obtain a binding resolution as to its compatibility with the statute. IDEA imposes on the DOE the duty to have an IEP in effect at the beginning of the school year. 20 U.S.C. § 1414(d)(2)(A). The DOE likely cannot avoid complying with this obligation by insisting [on] a consensual process that has evidently gone past the point of futility. IDEA gives the DOE the administrative procedure as a tool to comply with this obligation, and it stands to reason that DOE should use it when faced with an impending non-compliance with another statutory obligation.
2025 WL 2793079, at *16. The court said it made no sense to require the parents to file for due process to determine who had the duty to file for due process. That, the court concluded, would be futile. The court also rejected exhaustion for the parents’ claim that the DOE had a practice of referring the parent to the Department of the Family for negligence when she refused to accept a deficient IEP.
The court dismissed the claims against the Department of the Family as moot and barred by the abstention doctrine. It modified some of the magistrate judge’s factual findings related to the request for injunctive relief against the DOE. It also found that some requested relief had become moot because of the private school enrollment and the DOE’s promise of prospective payment. The remainder was subject to exhaustion.
The court nevertheless ordered the DOE “to make use of its due process rights under IDEA and submit its final, proposed IEP for [the student] to a due process hearing.” Pending the October 1, 2025, IEP team meeting and unless the court ordered otherwise, the DOE was required to do so within fourteen days of the order and notify the court of its compliance. The court then stayed the case pending the administrative proceeding.
The opinion is significant because it distinguishes between claims that had to proceed through IDEA’s administrative process and claims about who had the responsibility to invoke that process when no IEP had been finalized. On the latter issue, the court concluded that requiring the parents to initiate due process to determine who had to initiate due process would itself be futile, and it ordered the DOE to submit its proposed IEP to a due process hearing.