Opinion of the Court
Rule Civ. Proc. 8(a)(3) (emphasis added); see also Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 54(c) (similar). Many of our opinions as well similarly speak of the “relief” a plaintiff “seeks” as the remedies he requests. See, e.g., South Carolina v. North Carolina, 558 U. S. 256, 260 (2010) (describing the “relief” South Carolina “seeks” as the remedies demanded in its “Prayer for Relief”); New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. City of New York, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (per curiam) (slip op., at 1) (describing “the precise relief that petitioners requested in the prayer” as two remedies, a declaration and an injunction); Bowen v. Massachusetts, 487 U. S. 879, 893 (1988) (discussing 5 U. S. C. §702’s reference to an “action … seeking relief other than money damages”).
Faced with all this, Sturgis replies that, whatever the merits of our interpretation, precedent forecloses it. Brief for Respondents 19–20, 26–27. Specifically, the school district points to Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools, 580 U. S. 154 (2017). But the Court in Fry went out of its way to reserve rather than decide the question we now face. See id., at 165, n. 4; id., at 168, n. 8. And what the Court did say in Fry about the question presented there hardly advances the school district’s cause here. In Fry, the Court held that §1415(l)’s exhaustion requirement does not apply unless the plaintiff “seeks relief for the denial of” a free and appropriate public education “because that is the only ‘relief’ ” IDEA’s administrative processes can supply. Id., at 165, 168. This case presents an analogous but different question—whether a suit admittedly premised on the past denial of a free and appropriate education may nonetheless proceed without exhausting IDEA’s administrative processes if the remedy a plaintiff seeks is not one IDEA provides. In both cases, the question is whether a plaintiff must exhaust administrative processes under IDEA that cannot supply what he seeks. And here, as in Fry, we answer in the negative.
