UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

9744 PAYNE v. PENINSULA SCHOOL DISTRICT
enth and Eleventh Circuits. Mosely, 434 F.3d at 533; N.B. by
D.G., 84 F.3d at 1379; see also Coleman v. Newburgh
Enlarged City Sch. Dist., 503 F.3d 198, 203 (2d Cir. 2007)
(noting that the Second Circuit “ha[s] been equivocal in [its]
discussion of the IDEA’s exhaustion requirement, acknowledging
[its] statement in [Polera v. Board of Education, 288
F.3d 478, 483, 488-90 (2d Cir. 2002),] that the failure to
exhaust IDEA administrative remedies deprives a court of
subject matter jurisdiction but also referring to the IDEA’s
exhaustion requirements as the defendants’ ‘non-exhaustion
defense.’ ” (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted)).
Our prior statements were well-intentioned even if not
fully considered. We think our misstep well illustrates the
Supreme Court’s observation that “[c]ourts — including this
Court — have sometimes mischaracterized claim-processing
rules or elements of a cause of action as jurisdictional limitations,
particularly when that characterization was not central
to the case, and thus did not require close analysis.” Reed
Elsevier, 130 S. Ct. at 1243-44.
III
We now turn to the merits. We hold that the IDEA’s
exhaustion provision applies only in cases where the relief
sought by a plaintiff in the pleadings is available under the
IDEA. Non-IDEA claims that do not seek relief available
under the IDEA are not subject to the exhaustion requirement,
even if they allege injuries that could conceivably have been
redressed by the IDEA. We overrule our previous cases to the
extent that they state otherwise and conclude that, although
the district court properly dismissed Payne’s IDEA-based
§ 1983 claim, it should not have dismissed her non-IDEA
claims on exhaustion grounds.
A
The IDEA was enacted to protect children with disabilities
and their parents by requiring participating states to provide