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High Court to Hear Second
Important IDEA Case
by V. Wayne Young, Executive Director
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear its second high-profile case this term regarding the rights of parents and students who pursue due process appeals of decisions made by local school districts in providing special education services. In the first case, the high court ruled in favor of the school district. The second case addresses a different issue, but a similar principle.
In Murphy v. Arlington Central School District, the parents of a special education student brought suit claiming that they were entitled to reimbursement of expert witness fees, after prevailing in their challenge of a placement decision made by the district. [The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) specifically allows reimbursement of attorney’s fees for prevailing parties, but does not address expert witness fees.] After prevailing in their suit to recover reimbursement for private school tuition from the school district, the parents brought another suit in federal court, seeking recovery of $29,250 for the services of an educational consultant.
The school district opposed the parents’ application for fees on several grounds, including that IDEA does not allow “lay advocates” to recover attorneys’ fees, that the consultant’s time records were insufficient, and that the consultant failed to establish there was a market rate for her services. The trial court concluded that fees for expert or consulting services were compensable under IDEA. The school district appealed the ruling to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
This same issue had been decided previously by the 7th and 8th Circuit Courts, both of which found no entitlement to recover expert witness fees. However, the 2nd Circuit agreed with the trial court, ruling that a prevailing party is entitled to recover expert fees under IDEA. While the 2nd Circuit agreed with 7th and 8th Circuits that the statutory language of IDEA does not specifically authorize awarding expert witness fees, it stated that to rely solely on the statutory text without context would lead to a result Congress did not intend. The court stated that the right to award expert witness fees was “implicit” within IDEA.
The 2nd Circuit also concluded that prohibiting recovery of expert witness fees for prevailing parents would frustrate the purposes of the IDEA to “ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for employment and independent living” and “to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities and parents of such children are protected.”
In its decision in Shaffer v. Weast earlier this term, the Supreme Court ruled that, though IDEA does not specifically assign a burden of proof when parents challenge special education placements, the burden of proof rests with the parents.
Whether the court will follow this ruling when addressing the “implicit” issue of expert witness fees, which also are not specifically addressed in IDEA, remains to be seen.
- 02/2006
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