Source: https://massadvocates.org/Arlington/
Timestamp: 2019-06-16 23:20:14
Document Index: 194947983

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1415', '§1415', '§1920', '§1920', '§1821', '§1415', '§1415', '§1415', '§1415', '§5', '§1415', '§1415', '§1415', '§1400', '§1415', '§1988', '§1415', '§1415', '§1400', '§1415', '§731', '§1920', '§1920', '§1920', '§1415', '§1920', '§1988', '§1988', '§2', '§4', '§1920', '§2', '§2', '§2']

Arlington Cent. School Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Murphy, 548 U.S. 291 (2006)
No. 05-18 – Argued April 19, 2006, Decided June 26, 2006, 402 F. 3d 332, reversed and remanded.
Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined.
Ginsburg, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
Souter, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Stevens and Souter, JJ., joined.
In considering whether the IDEA provides clear notice, we begin with the text. We have “stated time and again that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there.” Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U. S. 249, 253-254 (1992). When the statutory “language is plain, the sole function of the courts — at least where the disposition required by the text is not absurd — is to enforce it according to its terms.” Hartford Underwriters Ins. Co. v. Union Planters Bank, N. A., 530 U. S. 1, 6 (2000) (quoting United States v. Ron Pair Enterprises, Inc., 489 U. S. 235, 241 (1989), in turn quoting Caminetti v. United States, 242 U. S. 470, 485 (1917); internal quotation marks omitted).
This argument has multiple flaws. For one thing, as the Court of Appeals in this case acknowledged, “ ‘costs’ is a term of art that generally does not include expert fees.” 402 F. 3d, at 336. The use of this term of art, rather than a term such as “expenses,” strongly suggests that §1415(i)(3)(B) was not meant to be an open-ended provision that makes participating States liable for all expenses incurred by prevailing parents in connection with an IDEA case — for example, travel and lodging expenses or lost wages due to time taken off from work. Moreover, contrary to respondents’ suggestion, §1415(i)(3)(B) does not say that a court may award “costs” to prevailing parents; rather, it says that a court may award reasonable attorney’s fees “as part of the costs” to prevailing parents. This language simply adds reasonable attorney’s fees incurred by prevailing parents to the list of costs that prevailing parents are otherwise entitled to recover. This list of otherwise recoverable costs is obviously the list set out in 28 U. S. C. §1920, the general statute governing the taxation of costs in federal court, and the recovery of witness fees under §1920 is strictly limited by §1821, which authorizes travel reimbursement and a $40 per diem. Thus, the text of 20 U. S. C. §1415(i)(3)(B) does not authorize an award of any additional expert fees, and it certainly fails to provide the clear notice that is required under the Spending Clause.
Subparagraph (B) similarly does not help respondents. Subparagraph (B), which directs the GAO to study “the number of hours spent in IDEA cases by personnel, including … consultants,” says nothing about the award of fees to such consultants. Just because Congress directed the GAO to compile statistics on the hours spent by consultants in IDEA cases, it does not follow that Congress meant for States to compensate prevailing parties for the fees billed by these consultants.
Respondents maintain that “Congress’ direction to the GAO would be inexplicable if Congress did not anticipate that the expenses for ‘consultants’ would be recoverable,” Brief for Respondents 19, but this is incorrect. There are many reasons why Congress might have wanted the GAO to gather data on expenses that were not to be taxed as costs. Knowing the costs incurred by IDEA litigants might be useful in considering future procedural amendments (which might affect these costs) or a future amendment regarding fee shifting. And, in fact, it is apparent that the GAO study provision covered expenses that could not be taxed as costs. For example, the GAO was instructed to compile statistics on the hours spent by all attorneys involved in an IDEA action or proceeding, even though the Act did not provide for the recovery of attorney’s fees by a prevailing state or local educational agency.[2] Similarly, the GAO was directed to compile data on “expenses incurred by the parents,” not just those parents who prevail and are thus eligible to recover taxed costs.
The Court of Appeals, as noted above, was heavily influenced by a Casey footnote, see 402 F. 3d, at 336-337 (quoting 499 U. S., at 91-92, n. 5), but the court misunderstood the footnote’s meaning. The text accompanying the footnote argued, based on an analysis of several fee-shifting statutes, that the term “attorney’s fees” does not include expert fees. Id., at 88-91. In the footnote, we commented on petitioners’ invocation of the Conference Committee Report relating to 20 U. S. C. §1415(i)(3)(B), which stated: “`The conferees intended that the term “attorneys’ fees as part of the costs” include reasonable expenses and fees of expert witnesses and the reasonable costs of any test or evaluation which is found to be necessary for the preparation of the … case.’ ” 499 U. S., at 91-92, n. 5 (quoting H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 99-687, at 5; ellipsis in original). This statement, the footnote commented, was “an apparent effort to depart from ordinary meaning and to define a term of art.” 499 U. S., at 92, n. 5. The footnote did not state that the Conference Committee Report set out the correct interpretation of §1415(i)(3)(B), much less that the Report was sufficient, despite the language of the statute, to provide the clear notice required under the Spending Clause. The thrust of the footnote was simply that the term “attorneys’ fees,” standing alone, is generally not understood as encompassing expert fees. Thus, Crawford Fitting and Caseystrongly reinforce the conclusion that the IDEA does not unambiguously authorize prevailing parents to recover expert fees.
Finally, respondents vigorously argue that Congress clearly intended for prevailing parents to be compensated for expert fees. They rely on the legislative history of §1415 and in particular on the following statement in the Conference Committee Report, discussed above: “The conferees intend that the term `attorneys’ fees as part of the costs’ include reasonable expenses and fees of expert witnesses and the reasonable costs of any test or evaluation which is found to be necessary for the preparation of the … case.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 99-687, at 5.
I agree, in the main, with the Court’s resolution of this case, but part ways with the Court’s opinion in one respect. The Court extracts from Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1, 17 (1981), a “clear notice” requirement, and deems it applicable in this case because Congress enacted the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), as it did the legislation at issue in Pennhurst, pursuant to the Spending Clause. Ante, at 3-4. That extraction, in my judgment, is unwarranted. Pennhurst’s “clear notice” requirement should not be unmoored from its context. The Court there confronted a plea to impose “an unexpected condition for compliance — a new programmatic obligation for participating States.” Bell v. New Jersey, 461 U. S. 773, 790, n. 17 (1983). The controversy here is lower key: It concerns not the educational programs IDEA directs school districts to provide, but “the remedies available against a non-complying district.” Ibid; see post, at 9-11 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
The Court’s repeated references to a Spending Clause derived “clear notice” requirement, see ante, at 3-4, 6, 8, 11, and n. 3, 12, are questionable on other grounds as well. For one thing, IDEA was enacted not only pursuant to Congress’ Spending Clause authority, but also pursuant to §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S. 992, 1009 (1984) (IDEA’s predecessor, the Education of the Handicapped Act, was “set up by Congress to aid the States in complying with their constitutional obligations to provide public education for handicapped children.”). Furthermore, no “clear notice” prop is needed in this case given the twin pillars on which the Court’s judgment securely rests. First, as the Court explains, ante, at 4-6, the specific, attorneys’-fees-oriented, provisions of IDEA, i.e., 20 U. S. C. §1415(i)(3)(B)-(G); §1415(d)(2)(L), “overwhelmingly support the conclusion that prevailing parents may not recover the costs of experts or consultants,” ante, at 8. Those provisions place controls on fees recoverable for attorneys’ services, without mentioning costs parents might incur for other professional services and controls geared to those costs. Second, as the Court develops, prior decisions closely in point “strongly support,” even “confirm … dramatically,” today’s holding that IDEA trains on attorneys’ fees and does not authorize an award covering amounts paid or payable for the services of an educational consultant. Ante, at 9 (citing Crawford Fitting Co. v. J. T. Gibbons, Inc., 482 U. S. 437 (1987), and West Virginia Univ. Hospitals, Inc. v. Casey, 499 U. S. 83 (1991)).
For the contrary conclusion, Justice Breyer’s dissent relies dominantly on a Conference Report stating the conferees’ view that the term “attorneys’ fees as part of the costs” includes “expenses and fees of expert witnesses” and payments for tests necessary for the preparation of a case. H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 99-687, p. 5 (1986) (internal quotation marks omitted).[4] Including costs of consultants and tests in §1415(i)(3)(B) would make good sense in light of IDEA’s overarching goal, i.e., to provide a “free appropriate public education” to children with disabilities, §1400(d)(1)(A). See post, at 5-8 (Breyer, J., dissenting). But Congress did not compose §1415(i)(3)(B)’s text, [5] as it did the texts of other statutes too numerous and varied to ignore, to alter the common import of the terms “attorneys’ fees” and “costs” in the context of expense-allocation legislation. See, e.g., 42 U. S. C. §1988(c) (2000 ed. and Supp. III) (added in 1991 specifically to “include expert fees as part of the attorney’s fee”); Casey, 499 U. S., at 88-92, and n. 4 (citing variously composed statutes that “explicitly shift expert … fees as well as attorney’s fees”). Given the constant meaning of the formulation “attorneys’ fees as part of the costs” in federal legislation, we are not at liberty to rewrite “the statutory text adopted by both Houses of Congress and submitted to the President,” id., at 98, to add several words Congress wisely might have included. The ball, I conclude, is properly left in Congress’ court to provide, if it so elects, for consultant fees and testing expenses beyond those IDEA and its implementing regulations already authorize, [6] along with any specifications, conditions, or limitations geared to those fees and expenses Congress may deem appropriate. Cf. §1415(i)(3)(B)-(G); §1415(d)(2)(L) (listing only attorneys’ fees, not expert or consulting fees, among the procedural safeguards about which school districts must inform parents).
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA or Act), 20 U. S. C. A. §1400 et seq., (Supp. 2006), says that a court may “award reasonable attorneys’ fees as part of the costs to the parents” who are prevailing parties. §1415(i)(3)(B). Unlike the Court, I believe that the word “costs” includes, and authorizes payment of, the costs of experts. The word “costs” does not define its own scope. Neither does the phrase “attorneys’ fees as part of costs.” But Members of Congress did make clear their intent by, among other things, approving a Conference Report that specified that “the term `attorneys’ fees as part of the costs’ includes reasonable expenses of expert witnesses and reasonable costs of any test or evaluation which is found to be necessary for the preparation of the parent or guardian’s case in the action or proceeding.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 99-687, p. 5 (1986); Appendix A, infra, at 19. No Senator or Representative voiced any opposition to this statement in the discussion preceding the vote on the Conference Report — the last vote on the bill before it was sent to the President. I can find no good reason for this Court to interpret the language of this statute as meaning the precise opposite of what Congress told us it intended.
After hearings and debate, several Senators introduced a new bill in the Senate that would have put a cap on attorneys’ fees for legal services lawyers, but at the same time would have explicitly authorized the award of “a reasonable attorney’s fee, reasonable witness fees, and other reasonable expenses of the civil action, in addition to the costs to a parent … who is the prevailing party.” Id., at 7 (emphasis added). While no Senator objected to the latter provision, some objected to the cap. See, e.g., id., at 17-18 (Additional Views of Senators Kerry, Kennedy, Pell, Dodd, Simon, Metzenbaum and Matsunaga) (accepting cost-shifting provision, but objecting to cap and other aspects of the bill). A bipartisan group of Senators, led by Senators Hatch and Weicker, proposed an alternative bill that authorized courts to award “a reasonable attorney’s fee in addition to the costs to a parent” who prevailed. Id., at 15-16 (Additional Views of Senators Hatch, Weicker, Stafford, Dole, Pell, Matsunaga, Simon, Kerry, Kennedy, Metzenbaum, Dodd, and Grassley); 131 Cong. Rec. 21389.
No one objected to this statement. By the time H. R. 1523 reached the floor, another substitute bill was introduced. 131 Cong. Rec. 31369 (1985). This new bill did not change in any respect the text of the authorization of expenses and costs. It did add a provision, however, that directed the General Accounting Office (GAO) — now known as the Government Accountability Office, see 31 U. S. C. A. §731 note (Supp. 2006) — to study and report to Congress on the fiscal impact of the cost-shifting provision. See id., at 31369-31370. The newly substituted bill passed the House without a recorded vote. Id., at 31377.
The Conference Report was returned to the Senate and the House. A motion was put to each to adopt the Conference Report, and both the Senate and the House agreed to the Conference Report by voice votes. See Appendix B, infra, at 22 (Senate); Appendix C, infra, at 23 (House). No objection was raised to the Conference Report’s statement that the cost-shifting provision was intended to authorize expert costs. I concede that “sponsors of the legislation did not mention anything on the floor about expert or consultant fees” at the time the Conference Report was submitted. Ante, at 3, n. 2 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). But I do not believe that silence is significant in light of the fact that every Senator and three of the five Representatives who spoke on the floor had previously signed his name to the Conference Report — a Report that made Congress’ intent clear on the first page of its explanation. See Appendix A, infra, at 19. And every Senator and Representative that took the floor preceding the votes voiced his strong support for the Conference Report. 132 Cong. Rec. 16823-16825 (1986) (Senate); id., at 17607-17612 (House). The upshot is that Members of both Houses of Congress voted to adopt both the statutory text before us and the Conference Report that made clear that the statute’s words include the expert costs here in question.
These statements and holdings are not surprising. After all, the basic objective of Pennhurst’s clear-statement requirement does not demand textual clarity in respect to every detail. That is because ambiguity about the precise nature of a statutory program’s details — particularly where they are of a kind that States might have anticipated — is rarely relevant to the basic question: Would the States have accepted the Federal Government’s funds had they only known the nature of the accompanying conditions? Often, the later filling-in of details through judicial interpretation will not lead one to wonder whether funding recipients would have agreed to enter the basic program at all. Given the nature of such details, it is clear that the States would have entered the program regardless. At the same time, to view each statutory detail of a highly complex federal/state program (involving say, transportation, schools, the environment) simply through the lens of linguistic clarity, rather than to assess its meanings in terms of basic legislative purpose, is to risk a set of judicial interpretations that can prevent the program, overall, from achieving its basic objectives or that might well reduce a program in its details to incoherence.
Neither does the statutory phrase — “as part of the costs to the parents of a child with a disability who is the prevailing party” — taken in its entirety unambiguously foreclose an award of expert fees. I agree that, read literally, that provision does not clearly grant authority to award any costs at all. And one might read it, as the Court does, as referencing another federal statute, 28 U. S. C. §1920, which provides that authority. See ante, at 5; see also §1920 (federal taxation of cost statute). But such a reading is not inevitable. The provision (indeed, the entire Act) says nothing about that other statute. And one can, consistent with the language, read the provision as both embodying a general authority to award costs while also specifying the inclusion of “reasonable attorneys’ fees” as part of those costs (as saying, for example, that a court “may award reasonable attorneys’ fees as part of [a] costs [award]”).
This latter reading, while linguistically the less natural, is legislatively the more likely. The majority’s alternative reading, by cross-referencing only the federal general cost-awarding statute (which applies solely in federal courts), would produce a jumble of different cost definitions applicable to similar IDEA administrative and state-court proceedings in different States. See §1920 (“A judge or clerk of any court of the United States may tax as costs the following …” (emphasis added)). This result is particularly odd, as all IDEA actions must begin in state due process hearings, where the federal cost statute clearly does not apply, and the overwhelming majority of these actions are never appealed to any court. See GAO, Report to the Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, U. S. Senate, Special Education: Numbers of Formal Disputes are Generally Low and States Are Using Mediation and Other Strategies to Resolve Conflicts (GAO-03-897), p. 13 (2003) (approximately 3,000 administrative hearings annually; under 10% appealed to state or federal court); see also Moore v. District of Columbia, 907 F. 2d 165, 166 (CADC 1990) (en banc) (joining other Circuits in holding that IDEA authorizes an “award of attorney fees to a parent who prevails in IDEA administrative proceedings”). And when parents do appeal, they can file their actions in either state or federal courts. 20 U. S. C. A. §1415(i)(2)(A) (Supp. 2006).
I am perfectly willing to assume that the majority is correct about the traditional scope of the word “costs.” In two cases this Court has held that the word “costs” is limited to the list set forth in 28 U. S. C. §1920 and does not include fees paid to experts. See Crawford Fitting Co. v. J. T. Gibbons, Inc., 482 U. S. 437 (1987) (interpreting Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 54(d)); West Virginia Univ. Hospitals, Inc. v. Casey, 499 U. S. 83 (1991) (interpreting 42 U. S. C. §1988 (1988 ed.)). But Congress is free to redefine terms of art. See, e.g., Casey, 499 U. S., at 88-90 (citing examples of statutes that shift “`costs of litigation (including … expert witness fees)’ “). And we have suggested that it might well do so through a statutory provision worded in a manner similar to the statute here — indeed, we cited the Conference Report language here at issue. Id., at 91-92, n. 5 (characterizing language as an “apparent effort to depart from ordinary meaning and to define a term of art” and noting that Congress made no such “effort” in respect to 42 U. S. C. §1988).
If Congress intended the word “costs” in §2 to authorize an award of only those costs listed in the federal cost statute, why did it use the word “expenses” in §4(b)(3)(A) as part of the “amount awarded to the prevailing party”? When used as a term of art, after all, “costs” does not cover expenses. Nor does the federal costs statute cover any expenses — at least not any that Congress could have wanted the GAO to study. Cf. 28 U. S. C. §1920 (referring only once to “expenses,” and doing so solely to refer to special interpretation services provided in actions initiated by the United States).
Of course, one might, through speculation, find other answers to these questions. One might, for example, imagine that Congress wanted the GAO to study the expenses that payment of expert fees engendered in state-court proceedings where state, but not federal, law requires that “ `expenses’ other than `costs’ might be receivable.” Ante, at 7, n. 1; but see supra, at 12-13. Or one might think that the word “expenses” is surplusage. Ante, at 7, n. 1; but see Duncan v. Walker, 533 U. S. 167, 174 (2001) (expressing Court’s “ `reluctance to treat statutory terms as surplusage in any setting,’” but especially when they play “a pivotal role in the statutory scheme”). Or one might believe that Congress was interested in the hours these experts spent, but not in the fees they obtained. Ante, at 7. But these answers are not necessarily consistent with the purpose of the GAO study provision, a purpose revealed by the language of the provision and its position in the statute. Its placement and its reference to §2 indicate that Congress ordered the study to help it keep track of the magnitude of the reimbursements that an earlier part of the new statute (namely, §2) mandated. See 100 Stat. 797 (stating that purpose of GAO study was to determine the “impact” of “section 2”). And the only reimbursement requirement that §2 mandates is the payment of “costs.”
[4] The relevant statement from the Conference Report reads in its entirety:
“The conferees intend that the term `attorneys’ fees as part of the costs’ include reasonable expenses and fees of expert witnesses and the reasonable costs of any test or evaluation which is found to be necessary for the preparation of the parent or guardian’s case in the action or proceeding, as well as traditional costs incurred in the course of litigating a case.” H. R. Conf. Rep. 99-687, at 5.
[5] At the time the Conference Report was submitted to the Senate and House, sponsors of the legislation did not mention anything on the floor about expert or consultant fees. They were altogether clear, however, that the purpose of the legislation was to “reverse” this Court’s decision in Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S. 992 (1984). In Smith, the Court held that, under the statute as then designed, prevailing parents were not entitled to attorneys’ fees. See 132 Cong. Rec. 16823 (1986) (remarks of Sen. Weicker) (“In adopting this legislation, we are rejecting the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Smith versus Robinson.”); id., at 16824 (remarks of Sen. Kerry) (“This vital legislation reverses a U. S. Supreme Court decision Smith versus Robinson.”); id., at 17608-17609 (remarks of Rep. Bartlett) (“I support those provisions in the conference agreement that, in response to the Supreme Court decision in … Smith versus Robinson, authorize the awarding of reasonable attorneys’ fees to parents who prevail in special education court cases.”); id., at 17609 (remarks of Rep. Biaggi) (“This legislation clearly supports the intent of Congress back in 1975 and corrects what I believe was a gross misinterpretation of the law. Attorneys’ fees should be provided to those individuals who are being denied access to the educational system.”).