1954Brown v. Board of Education — established that excluding children from public education on protected grounds violates equal protection; the legal foundation disability-rights litigation built on.
1971PARC v. Pennsylvania (consent decree) — Pennsylvania could not exclude children with intellectual disabilities from public school.
1972Mills v. Board of Education of D.C. — schools can't exclude disabled students without due process, regardless of cost. Together with PARC, this directly pressured Congress toward 1975.
1973Section 504, Rehabilitation Act — broader civil-rights nondiscrimination law, predates IDEA by two years, still runs alongside it today (different eligibility, different remedy).
1975Education for All Handicapped Children Act (P.L. 94-142) — the law that becomes IDEA. Created Part B, FAPE, IEPs, the 40% "full funding" target.
1982Board of Ed. v. Rowley (SCOTUS) — first interpretation of FAPE: an IEP only had to provide "some educational benefit," not maximize potential. The floor for 35 years.
1988Honig v. Doe (SCOTUS) — limited schools' ability to unilaterally remove disabled students for discipline; origin of the "stay-put" provision still used in ARD disputes.
1990Reauthorization renames the law IDEA, adds transition services and autism/TBI as eligibility categories. ADA passes the same year.
1997Reauthorization adds manifestation determination reviews and requires functional behavioral assessments/BIPs for discipline cases.
2004IDEIA reauthorization — allows RTI as an alternative to the discrepancy model for SLD identification, adds highly-qualified-teacher requirements aligned with NCLB.
2005Schaffer v. Weast (SCOTUS) — burden of proof in an IDEA due process hearing falls on whoever requests it, usually the parent.
2017Endrew F. v. Douglas County (SCOTUS, unanimous) — raised the FAPE floor from Rowley's "some benefit" to progress "appropriately ambitious" in light of the child's circumstances. The current standard ARD committees write IEPs against.
2026ED–HHS interagency agreement moves OSERS/OSEP's operational management to HHS — the shift this tool's toggle tracks.