Opinion ID: 701744
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: District Court Review of the Appeals Panel

Text: 32 As we noted, see supra at 527, IDEA empowers the district court to hear additional evidence, and directs the court to base its decision on the preponderance of the evidence. We have interpreted Rowley 's mandate to accord due weight to the administrative proceedings as a requirement to consider--although not necessarily to accept--the administrative fact findings. Oberti, 995 F.2d at 1219. The precise question here is whether the district court owes less consideration to the administrative fact findings when the second tier reversed the first tier. Clearly, the district court's review should be unaffected where the appeals panel owes no deference to the hearing officer. Thus, the issue is whether the district court's review should be any less deferential where the appeals panel disregarded a record-supported, credibility-based factual determination of the hearing officer. 33 Given our decision about the appeals panel's scope of review, we conclude that a district court should still give due weight to the appeals panel's decision when it reverses the hearing officer's conclusions of law, inferences from proven facts, and factual findings based on credibility judgments where non-testimonial, extrinsic evidence justified the appeals panel's contrary decision. 4 In this case, because the appeals panel found that the extrinsic evidence in the record supported conclusions contrary to those of the hearing officer, the district court correctly gave the panel's decision due weight notwithstanding the panel's differences with the hearing officer. 34