← All d.c. letters

D.C. Letter 11: The Claim and Issue Chart, with a Burden Column

Reviewed previewThis page shows the reviewed public portion and the exact outline of the member edition.What the labels mean

When to Use It

Build this before you draft the complaint (DC-Tool 8) and keep it open while you write it. A due process complaint is a pleading, and a hearing officer can only decide the claims you actually name. In the District this chart does more work than a comparable chart in a state that assigns one fixed burden, because the party who must persuade the hearing officer is not fixed here. It changes claim by claim, and getting the tag wrong on even one claim means you walk into the hearing not knowing whether you have to prove it or the agency does.

D.C. runs a claim inventory built from the same short list of categories every IDEA case rests on: child find, evaluation, eligibility, IEP content, placement and least restrictive environment, implementation, and the procedural violation (DC-Tool 2). What D.C. adds is a burden that shifts partway through that list. The filer, ordinarily you, bears production and persuasion by default. On a claim about the appropriateness of an existing or proposed IEP or placement, persuasion shifts to the public agency, but only after you clear a low prima facie bar, and only for complaints filed after July 1, 2016 (D.C. Code 38-2571.03(6)(A)-(B); 5-A DCMR 3053.6; ODR SOP 706, checked August 13, 2026). The prima facie bar is deliberately low, closer to a directed-verdict standard than a merits test, and a hearing officer who weighs your credibility at that stage rather than simply asking whether you have made out a case has applied the wrong standard (W.S. v. District of Columbia, 502 F. Supp. 3d 102 (D.D.C. 2020)). Complaints filed before July 1, 2016 ran under the old rule, where the parent carried everything, cited then to former 5-E DCMR 3030.14, not the unrelated resolution-period provision at former 3030.3 that some circulating materials still point to. If any claim in your case predates that date, do not assume the shift reaches it.

Reimbursement for a unilateral private placement is its own carve-out, not a third stop on a shifting scale. There the rule runs prong by prong: on whether the private placement was appropriate, the parent keeps both burdens with no shift, ever, but on whether the agency's program was appropriate, the ordinary rule still governs, so persuasion can shift to the agency once the parent clears the same low prima facie bar that applies to any other program-appropriateness claim, and the hearing officer may still bifurcate the two inquiries and skip the private-placement question entirely if the agency's program is found appropriate. That risk belongs on this chart, not just in your head (DC-Tool 23; DC-Letter 16 carries the reimbursement case itself). And if a charter school is the respondent, the shifted burden, where it applies, lands on the charter as its own LEA, not on DCPS (D.C. Code 38-2571.02; 38-2571.03(6)(A)-(B)).

One warning belongs at the top of the chart, not the bottom. Whatever you win on the burden at the hearing evaporates on court review. A party who challenges the HOD in the civil action carries the burden of persuading the court it was wrong, regardless of who held the administrative burden below (Reid v. District of Columbia, 401 F.3d 516, 521 (D.C. Cir. 2005); Kerkam v. McKenzie, 862 F.2d 884, 887 (D.C. Cir. 1988)).

Use it with: DC-Tool 2 (the claim inventory), DC-Tool 8 (drafting the complaint), and DC-Tool 23 (who proves what).