A recent opinion of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will impact the dismissal and settlement of due process complaints for special education students, according to a client news brief from Lozano Smith Attorneys at Law. In , an adult student with autism initiated a lawsuit in federal court alleging the CDE violated the ADA and Section 504, and seeking monetary damages for those alleged wrongs. The central theme of his complaint was that to receive a free and appropriate public education, he required an in-state residential placement, and the CDE had failed to provide him a residential placement in California.  The United States District Court dismissed the student’s case, due to his failure to exhaust the Individuals with Disabilities Act’s administrative remedies, and the student appealed to the Ninth Circuit. In , the Ninth Circuit held that the student could not sue his school district or state educational agency under the Americans with Disabilities Act or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 for failing to make an in-state residential placement available to him without having first exhausted IDEA administrative remedies, that none of the exceptions to exhaustion of administrative remedies applied, and that settlement of his special education due process case did not satisfy the exhaustion requirement. is the first Ninth Circuit opinion to address exhaustion since the Supreme Court’s Fry decision in 2017.  In light of this decision, Lozano Smith said local educational agencies should carefully scrutinize any ADA or Section 504 claims that appear to seek relief that is fundamentally educational and related to a student’s unique needs. Further, a plaintiff may be unable to maintain a civil suit against a local educational agency if there is a dismissal or settlement prior to a final administrative decision. .