Opinion ID: 780727
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Acceptable IEP

Text: 75 Finally, John T. is not a prevailing party by virtue of his having obtained an acceptable IEP. Although John T. undoubtedly realized an objective of his litigation upon obtaining an acceptable IEP which placed him in the public schools, this result was not judicially sanctioned as required by Buckhannon. 532 U.S. at 605, 121 S.Ct. 1835. John T. and the DCIU developed the IEP through negotiations out of court, and no court has endorsed the agreement with a judicial imprimatur. Id. 76 John T. argues to the contrary that we are not bound by Buckhannon 's requirement that settlements must be judicially sanctioned in order to confer prevailing party status. For this proposition, he cites Barrios v. California Interscholastic Federation, 277 F.3d 1128 (9th Cir.) cert. denied ___ U.S. ___, 123 S.Ct. 98, 154 L.Ed.2d 28 (2002). 77 In Barrios, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Buckhannon 's conclusions regarding settlement agreements as dictum. See 277 F.3d at n.5. In doing so, however, the court distinguished Buckhannon on very narrow grounds. It argued that Buckhannon applies only where litigation is a catalyst for policy change, such as intervening legislation, and not where litigation is a catalyst for mutually agreed upon settlement. See id. (In fact, the Barrios court discusses settlement as if it fell outside of the catalyst theory framework altogether.) Instead, the Barrios court relied on the Ninth Circuit's pre Buckhannon rule that settlements could confer prevailing party status with or without judicial sanction. See id. at 1134 (citing Fischer v. SJB-P.D. Inc., 214 F.3d 1115, 1118 (9th Cir.2000)). 78 We will not follow Barrios 's narrow reading of Buckhannon. Although Buckhannon did warn against relying on dictum, see 532 U.S. at 603 n. 5, 121 S.Ct. 1835 (implying that the catalyst theory, itself, was spawned from Supreme Court dictum), it also cast a very broad net. By expressly linking its holding to other prevailing party fee-shifting statutes, the Buckhannon Court encourages an expansive reading. See id. at 602-03, 121 S.Ct. 1835. Moreover, we read Buckhannon to reject the catalyst theory whole hog. While Barrios differentiates between policy changes and changes achieved through voluntary settlement, the Supreme Court's own understanding of the catalyst theory does not reflect such a distinction. See 532 U.S. at 601, 121 S.Ct. 1835 ([T]he `catalyst theory' ... posits that a plaintiff is a `prevailing party' if it achieves the desired result because the lawsuit brought about a voluntary change in the defendant's conduct.).