The U.S. Supreme Court has requested that the Solicitor General’s Office for the United States submit briefs regarding the merits of a case that is pending appeal. The case is Arlington Central School District Board of Education v. Murphy (No.05-18). The Murphy case presents the question as to whether expert’s fees are recoverable under IDEA. This question has been answered in the negative in the T.D. v. La Grange Sch. Dist. case in the 7th Circuit and in Illinois. If Murphy were to be accepted for appeal and decided favorably for the parents’ side, it would effectively reverse the decision in T.D.
The school district lost in the Murphy case and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court claiming that IDEA authorized prevailing parents to recover attorneys' fees but not experts’ fees. The amount of experts’ fees in question is approximately $30,000. The solicitor general’s brief is expected in several months, so this case will likely not be heard, if at all, until the Fall of 2006. It may not be decided until some time in 2007. Thus, it may take some time to get an answer to a question that parents ask frequently when weighing the relative risks of pursuing due process.
The Court declined to hear an appeal brought by the State of Louisiana. The case is entitled Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education v. Pace (No. 04-1655) and it centered on whether the State of Louisiana had waived its rights to immunity from suit for monetary damages under IDEA and section 504 when it accepted federal dollars. The lower courts ruled that there was no immunity, and the Department of Justice backed the parents’ claim on appeal. As a result, the parents’ suit is permitted to go forward in the litigation against the State.
The final case brings to finality a case involving a child with autism that has cost millions in tax-payer dollars because of an intransigent school district. In the case from Tennessee, Hamilton County Department of Education v. Deal (No. 05-55), the school district refused the parents’ proffered IEP, which called for ABA and an individual aide for a young child with autism. The school district’s position was that its IEP conferred something more than a trivial benefit, so it had provided a FAPE. The hearing officer disagreed with the school district’s minimal standard for FAPE. The federal district court reversed and the 6th Circuit reversed and reinstated the hearing officer, ultimately finding for the parents. The school district’s lawyers had made this case an example for parents who followed and sought ABA; a nasty case where the parents finally won after years of struggle for an appropriate program.
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