Clifton City Board of Education v. A.G. and the Limits of Federal Jurisdiction
Every few years, a school district tries the same move: an IDEA due process case is pending before an Administrative Law Judge, the district doesn’t like a pre-hearing ruling, and instead of litigating forward, it runs to federal court asking for relief now. Sometimes the district calls it a “stay.” Sometimes a “declaratory judgment.” Sometimes it wraps the whole thing in breathless claims of irreparable harm.
And every time, the answer is the same: no jurisdiction.
Judge Katharine Hayden’s July 2025 opinion in Clifton City Board of Education v. A.G. is the latest reminder that federal courts are not available to supervise IDEA proceedings in real time. The opinion is short, direct, and devastating in its simplicity. If you practice in this space and still think there’s a clever way around exhaustion, this case should cure you of that illusion.
The Setup: A Discovery Order the District Didn’t Like
The underlying dispute was unremarkable. Parents challenged a proposed IEP through the New Jersey Office of Administrative Law. An ALJ issued a pre-hearing discovery order. The district objected to that order and, before a single witness testified, filed a federal complaint seeking two things: a declaration that it did not have to comply with the ALJ’s order, and injunctive relief restraining enforcement of that order.
This posture matters. The district was not appealing a final administrative decision. There had been no findings of fact, no conclusions of law, no merits determination of any kind. The ALJ had not even begun to take testimony. What the district wanted was interlocutory federal oversight of an ongoing IDEA proceeding.
That is exactly what the statute does not allow.
The Statute Is Clear, and the Court Doesn’t Flinch.
IDEA’s judicial review provision authorizes a civil action only by a party “aggrieved by the findings and decision” made after a due process hearing, or by a decision that fully resolves the administrative case. That language has been litigated for decades. Courts have repeatedly rejected attempts to expand it to cover interim rulings, procedural skirmishes, or discovery disputes.
Judge Hayden does not reinvent the wheel. She simply applies it.
The district court’s jurisdictional inquiry “need not look further than the pleadings.” What the district described in its own complaint was an interlocutory appeal from a discovery ruling. That alone doomed the case. IDEA does not authorize federal courts to micromanage the timing, scope, or propriety of pre-hearing orders issued by ALJs.
The court also dispatches a recurring distraction: the suggestion that a lack of jurisdiction somehow ties the court’s hands. It does not. Whether raised by motion or sua sponte, dismissal is mandatory when subject matter jurisdiction is absent. There is no “close enough” doctrine here.
Exhaustion Means What It Says
Recognizing the problem, the district invoked the familiar quartet of exhaustion exceptions: futility, pure questions of law, inability of the agency to grant relief, and irreparable harm. Courts recite these exceptions often. Courts apply them rarely. Clifton is a textbook example of why.
First, futility. The district could not explain why proceeding with the hearing would be futile, especially when one of the core purposes of exhaustion is to develop a record for review. The mere fact that an ALJ ruled against the district on a pre-hearing issue does not make further proceedings pointless. As the court notes, the district might still prevail on the merits. Or the contested ruling might ultimately prove irrelevant.
Second, “purely legal” questions. The district insisted the dispute involved only law. The court was unimpressed. The district’s own framing relied on multiple factual predicates concerning the timing and purpose of parental observation requests. If factual context matters, the issue is not purely legal. Labeling it so does not make it so.
Third, inability of the ALJ to grant relief. That argument collapsed into a complaint that the ALJ had already rejected the district’s position. Disagreement is not incapacity.
Fourth, irreparable harm. The claimed harm was speculative and hypothetical, premised on what might happen if the district had to continue with the hearing. Courts have repeatedly rejected this move. Being required to litigate is not irreparable injury. That is the system working as designed.
No Supervisory Role, No Advisory Opinions
One of the opinion’s most important passages addresses what the district was really asking the court to do: decide in advance how state regulations apply to facts the ALJ had not yet found. That would require the federal court to “identify predicate facts in advance of the ALJ” and rule on them first.
IDEA expressly forbids that structure. Federal courts review administrative decisions; they do not preempt them. They do not sit as supervisors of ALJs. And they certainly do not issue advisory opinions mid-stream to steer ongoing hearings.
Judge Hayden’s opinion situates Clifton within a long line of District of New Jersey cases dismissing precisely this type of suit. The message is unmistakable: this is not a gray area. It is settled law.
Why Districts Keep Trying — and Why They Should Stop
If the doctrine is so clear, why do these cases keep appearing?
The answer is not doctrinal confusion. It is strategic impatience. Discovery orders can be uncomfortable. They can feel intrusive. They can raise concerns about scope, burden, or precedent. But IDEA provides a mechanism to address those concerns: complete the hearing, then appeal if you are aggrieved.
What IDEA does not provide is a fast-track to federal court every time an ALJ issues an unfavorable procedural ruling. Attempting that route wastes resources, delays resolution for families, and predictably ends in dismissal.
Clifton should be read less as a rebuke and more as a warning label. Filing these cases does not preserve rights. It does not gain leverage. It does not create helpful precedent. It simply results in an early exit — often with language that future courts will cite against you.
The Takeaway
There is nothing novel about Clifton City Board of Education v. A.G., and that is precisely its value. It confirms, yet again, that IDEA exhaustion is not a technicality. It is a jurisdictional boundary. Federal courts will not cross it simply because a party is unhappy with how an administrative case is unfolding.
For practitioners on both sides, the lesson is straightforward. Litigate the due process case. Make your record. Preserve your objections. And if you are truly aggrieved by a final decision, then go to federal court.
Trying to shortcut that process is not creative lawyering. It is a dead end — and Clifton proves it.
