A court in America has ruled that expert witness fees are not recoverable by parents who win actions under the country’s Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In a judgement that would seem perverse to British experts, the US Supreme Court held that: “the term ‘costs’, as it appears in the statute, is a ‘term of art’ that did not include expert expenses.”
The judgement came in the case of Arlington Central School District Board of Education vs Murphy.
The applicable provision of the IDEA [20 USC 1415(i)(3)(B)] states that “[i]n an action or proceeding brought under this section, the court, in its discretion, may award reasonable attorneys’ fees as part of the costs to the parents of a child with a disability who is the prevailing party.”
The majority recognized various reports and studies supported finding that expert costs were recoverable by prevailing parents, but ruled that “legislative history is simply not enough” to change the actual statutory language used. The majority also found that requiring school districts to reimburse prevailing parents for expert fees runs foul of the Constitution’s Spending Clause, which permits Congress to set the terms and conditions on which it disburses federal funds, because it does not “unambiguously authorize prevailing parents to recover expert fees”.

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