Kaseman v. District of Columbia

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 6, 2006 Decided March 31, 2006

No. 05-7016

CARL KASEMAN, K.K., A MINOR, BY HER PARENTS AND NEXT

FRIENDS, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

v.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

A MUNICIPAL CORPORATION AND

CLIFFORD B. JANEY, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY,

CEO/SUPERINTENDENT, D.C. SCHOOLS,

APPELLANTS

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 03cv01858)

William J. Earl, Senior Assistant Attorney General, District

of Columbia, argued the cause for appellants. With him on the

brief were Robert J. Spagnoletti, Attorney General and Edward

E. Schwab, Deputy Attorney General.

Donna L. Wulkan argued the cause and filed the brief for

appellees.

Before: HENDERSON, ROGERS and BROWN, Circuit Judges.

2

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN.

BROWN, Circuit Judge: The Individuals with Disabilities

Education Act (IDEA) provides that a parent who successfully

challenges the Act’s implementation may be awarded reasonable

attorneys’ fees. However, the District of Columbia Appropria-

tions Act, 2005, caps the District’s payment of IDEA attorneys’

fees at $4,000 per “action.” This case requires us to determine

whether a judicial proceeding to recover attorneys’ fees incurred

in a prior IDEA administrative proceeding is a separate “action”

from the prior proceeding or whether the administrative and

judicial proceedings together comprise a single “action.” The

district court held that the administrative and judicial proceed-

ings qualify as separate “actions.” We find this reading of the

statutes ultimately unconvincing and therefore reverse.

I

Congress enacted the IDEA in order to “ensure that all

children with disabilities” have access to “a free appropriate

public education that emphasizes special education and related

services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them

for employment and independent living.” 20 U.S.C.

§ 1400(d)(1)(A) (2000), amended by 20 U.S.C. § 1400 (West

Supp. 2005).1 State and local educational agencies receiving

federal assistance under the IDEA must institute procedural

safeguards, id. § 1415(a) (2000), including providing parents of

1

Congress amended the IDEA through the Individuals with

Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. See Pub. L. 108-

446, 118 Stat. 2647 (2004). As these amendments did not take effect

until July 1, 2005, see Pub. L. 108-446 § 302(a)(1), 118 Stat. at 2803,

all references to the statute will be to the prior version.

2

3

a disabled child “an opportunity to present complaints with

respect to any matter relating to the identification, evaluation, or

educational placement” of their child, id. § 1415(b)(6). Once

parents complain, they are entitled to “an impartial due process

hearing” conducted by the agency, id. § 1415(f)(1), and have a

right to an attorney during the hearing, id. § 1415(h)(1).

“Any party aggrieved by the findings and decision made”

in the hearing can “bring a civil action with respect to the

complaint” in either state or federal court seeking “appropriate”

relief. Id. § 1415(i)(2)(A)-(B). Under our decision in Moore v.

District of Columbia, 907 F.2d 165 (D.C. Cir. 1990) (en banc),

a party who prevails at the administrative level may also seek

one form of judicial relief. Although the text of the IDEA does

not explicitly identify such a party as “aggrieved,” Moore allows

that party to petition a court for recovery of attorneys’ fees

under the IDEA’s fee-shifting provision. Id. at 171. The fee-

shifting provision states: “In any 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.” 20 U.S.C.

§ 1415(i)(3)(B) (2000). In an IDEA action involving the D.C.

public schools, “an attorney who represents a party in an action

or an attorney who defends an action, including an administra-

tive proceeding,” may not receive fees “in excess of $4,000 for

that action.” District of Columbia Appropriations Act, 2005,

Pub. L. No. 108-335 § 327, 188 Stat. 1322, 1344 (2004).

II

Appellees, minor children and their parents or guardians, all

prevailed in administrative complaints filed against the D.C.

Public Schools under the IDEA. Appellees sought to recover

attorneys’ fees and costs from the District without obtaining a

court-ordered fee award. The District made partial payments of

4

some of the claims on Appellees’ invoices, but it disputed other

claims and refused to make payment on some invoices entirely.

On September 5, 2003, Appellees filed suit in the United States

District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking an award of

attorneys’ fees under § 1415(i)(3)(B). The district court granted

summary judgment to Appellees on July 7, 2004, entering an

award of $352,714.58 plus interest. Kaseman v. District of

Columbia, 329 F. Supp. 2d 20, 32 (D.D.C. 2004) (Kaseman I).

The court also awarded “reasonable attorney’s fees and costs

incurred in [the] fee litigation,” id. at 33, which a later order

quantified as $90,926.83, Kaseman v. District of Columbia, No.

03-1858 (D.D.C. Aug. 2, 2004) (unpublished order).

On August 17, 2004, Appellees moved for the District to be

held in contempt of the July 7 order. The District argued that it

was in “substantial compliance” with the order, having paid

$214,907.66, and that its ability to pay the entire award was

limited by the congressionally-imposed fee cap of $4,000 per

attorney per action. At a hearing on October 22, 2004, the

District agreed to pay an additional $29,934.82, which Appel-

lees claimed was still due even under the fee cap. However, the

District maintained that the fee cap prevented it from paying the

$90,926.83 award of fees incurred during the district court

litigation. On January 6, 2005, the district court ruled in favor of

Appellees, finding the litigation regarding fees was a separate

“action” from the underlying administrative proceeding and

therefore subject to a separate fee cap. Kaseman v. District of

Columbia, 355 F. Supp. 2d 205, 210-11 (D.D.C. 2005)

(Kaseman II). Citing Calloway v. District of Columbia, 216 F.3d

1, 9 (D.C. Cir. 2000), the district court felt bound by a “very

strong presumption” that appropriations acts do not amend

substantive law, and that the separate-actions approach was

“most likely to enable plaintiffs to enforce their rights under

IDEA.” Kaseman II, 355 F. Supp. 2d at 210. The court found its

approach was consistent with this Circuit’s “treatment of fees-

5

on-fees actions as generally being distinct from the underlying

claims and as being separately compensable.” Id. (citing Turner

v. D.C. Bd. of Elections & Ethics, 354 F.3d 890, 898-99 (D.C.

Cir. 2004)).

III

The single issue presented on appeal is whether IDEA

administrative proceedings and subsequent litigation regarding

attorneys’ fees are part of the same “action,” as used in the

appropriations act, or whether such litigation constitutes a new

“action.” Our review of this question of statutory interpretation

is de novo. See Calloway, 216 F.3d at 5.

As an initial matter, we reject the reasoning used by the

district court. While there is a presumption that appropriations

acts do not modify substantive law, id. at 9, our reasoning in

Calloway renders inapposite the district court’s invocation of

that presumption. In Calloway, we held that the fee cap should

not be construed to alter courts’ ability under the IDEA to award

fees to prevailing parties, but merely to constrain the District’s

ability to pay those fees. Id. at 12. Hence, regardless of whether

the term “action” in the appropriations act contemplates a

separate application of the fee cap to fees-on-fees litigation, only

the District’s obligation to disburse appropriated funds will be

affected by the fee cap. Because of our holding in Calloway, the

courts’ ability to award fees to litigants under the IDEA is not at

issue here.

The district court’s reliance on Turner is also misplaced.

The issue in Turner was whether an award of attorneys’ fees in

a civil rights case could be apportioned between multiple

defendants—the District and the United States. 354 F.3d at 895.

We held that “when there are fractionable parts of a lawsuit not

fairly attributable to other parties,” the normal rule of joint and

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several liability for recoverable attorneys’ fees does not apply;

instead, “liability for attorney’s fees and expenses may be

apportioned exclusively to the party who caused the plaintiff to

incur those costs.” Id. at 898-99. In Turner, we applied joint and

several liability to the attorneys’ fees for the underlying claims

but found the fees-on-fees claim to be fractionable. Id. at 899.

While such an approach presupposes that a fees-on-fees claim

is analytically distinct from an initial claim for attorneys’ fees,

it sheds no light on whether both types of claims are part of the

same “action,” as the term is used in the appropriations act.

Congress amended the predecessor of the IDEA in 1986 to

permit courts to award attorneys’ fees in IDEA actions. See

Handicapped Children’s Protection Act of 1986, Pub. L. 99-372,

100 Stat. 796. Since that time, the IDEA’s provisions have

consistently been construed to authorize two types of “actions”

for attorneys’ fees: 1) requests for fees in suits brought to

challenge adverse administrative determinations under

§ 1415(i)(2), i.e., suits by persons aggrieved by the results of

their administrative hearings, and 2) claims for fees brought by

parents who have prevailed at the administrative level. See

Moore, 907 F.2d at 171; see also King ex rel. King v. Floyd

County Bd. of Educ., 228 F.3d 622, 625 (6th Cir. 2000). Parties

who prevail at the administrative level can also recover fees-on-

fees, as our general rule is that the court may award additional

fees for “time reasonably devoted to obtaining attorney’s fees.”

Envtl. Def. Fund v. EPA, 672 F.2d 42, 62 (D.C. Cir. 1982).

We have no cause to question the reasoning of Moore and

Environmental Defense Fund, but the “semantic strain” between

direct and implied causes of action, Brown v. Griggsville Cmty.

Unit Sch. Dist. No. 4, 12 F.3d 681, 683 (7th Cir. 1993), creates

just enough uncertainty that the scope of the fee cap is not self-

evident. Whether fees-on-fees should be subject to the same fee

cap as the award of fees for the underlying proceedings depends

7

on whether the “cause of action” implied in Moore should be

considered part of the same overall “action” as the underlying

complaint. Moore’s use of the term “independent cause of

action” does not itself resolve this question. Cf. 1 Am. Jur. 2d

Actions § 4 (2005) (“Although in some statutory contexts the

term ‘action’ has been deemed the equivalent of ‘cause of

action,’ the terms generally are distinguished by noting that an

action is a judicial proceeding, while a cause of action is the fact

or facts which give rise to the proceeding.” (footnote omitted)).

As the fee cap applies only to the District, no other circuit

has confronted the precise question before us. At the same time,

many of our sister circuits have similarly implied a cause of

action for the recovery of attorneys’ fees by parties prevailing in

IDEA proceedings at the administrative level. See, e.g., Zipperer

ex rel. Zipperer v. Sch. Bd. of Seminole County, Fla., 111 F.3d

847, 851 (11th Cir. 1997); Brown, 12 F.3d at 683; Eggers v.

Bullitt County Sch. Dist., 854 F.2d 892, 898 (6th Cir. 1988).

Since this cause of action is a creature of case law, the text of

the IDEA does not specify an applicable statute of limitations.

In the context of borrowing a state-law statute of limitations,

some courts have noted that the closest state-law analogue to a

petition for attorneys’ fees under the IDEA would be a request

for judicial review of an administrative decision. The Sixth

Circuit reasoned:

The forum shifts, to be sure, when the parent goes into

court, but the statute seems to treat the award of attorney

fees as another phase of the administrative proceeding. If,

as the wording of the statute suggests, the court may award

the prevailing parent a fee “in” the administrative proceed-

ing, we think that . . . the fee claim is “ancillary to the

underlying education dispute.”

8

King, 228 F.3d at 625-26 (brackets and citation omitted). Hence,

the court found the IDEA “makes the claim [for fees] analogous

to a cause of action for judicial review of the proceeding to

which the claim is appended.” Id. at 626. The Seventh Circuit

has also adopted this approach. See Powers v. Ind. Dep’t of

Educ., 61 F.3d 552, 556 (7th Cir. 1995) (finding a claim for

attorneys’ fees to be “not . . . an independent action but . . . a

claim ancillary to the underlying education dispute”). The

Eleventh Circuit, on the other hand, refused to borrow a statute

of limitations governing judicial review of administrative

decisions. Zipperer, 111 F.3d at 851. The court reasoned that

seeking fees in the district court is not akin to appealing an

agency decision, “[b]ecause the district court, rather than the

administrative agency, has jurisdiction to award fees”—i.e., the

parent is not appealing any issue on which the agency has

spoken or could have spoken. Id.

Language in our own case law reflects the tension between

these two views. We have acknowledged that a request for

statutory attorneys’ fees raises issues “collateral to” yet

“separate from” the merits of a case. Shultz v. Crowley, 802 F.2d

498, 501 & n.1 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (addressing whether pending

fee requests affected finality under Fed. R. Civ. P. 59). We are

persuaded that the rationales underlying the two diverging views

are best reconciled by treating a prevailing party’s fee request as

part of the same “action” as the underlying educational dispute,

despite being brought pursuant to an independent “cause of

action.” The IDEA makes an agency responsible for a child’s

evaluation and educational placement, not for granting fees,

which are awarded in the discretion of the district court. A fee

request is therefore not a direct appeal of a decision made by the

agency at the administrative hearing, as it does not call into

question the child’s evaluation or placement. Yet the parent’s

entitlement to fees arises out of the same controversy and

depends entirely on the administrative hearing for its existence.

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Although Appellees urge the alternative interpreta-

tion—arguing that, as the district court held, a fee request

qualifies as a separate “action” for purposes of the fee cap—the

practical consequences of this view undermine its plausibility.

Such an approach would produce disparate results for parents

who prevail at the administrative level relative to parents who

must resort to a civil action to prevail on their IDEA claims.

Parents who lose at the administrative level are able to appeal

the merits of that decision to the district court; they thus have no

need to use the separate Moore cause of action to appear in a

forum where they may be awarded fees. If such parents subse-

quently prevail in the district court, they would then be subject

to a one-time application of the $4,000 fee cap, as they have

prevailed in only one IDEA “action.” Yet, parents who prevail

at the administrative level may seek fees in the district court

through the Moore implied cause of action; if their use of that

cause of action would be considered a separate “action,” those

parents would then be able to recover an additional $4,000 in

fees-on-fees, on top of their recovery of $4,000 for fees incurred

at the administrative level. In effect, the litigant with the easiest

task under the IDEA would be entitled to twice the fees.

As the Seventh Circuit noted in Brown, “[i]t would be

anomalous to make the entitlement to attorney’s fees depend on

the stage at which a plaintiff’s successful effort to enforce the

rights conferred by the [IDEA] terminated.” 12 F.3d at 684. We

find this reasoning persuasive and believe it applies equally to

the task of interpreting the fee cap. When possible, statutes

should be interpreted to avoid “untenable distinctions,” “unrea-

sonable results,” or “unjust or absurd consequences.” Am.

Tobacco Co. v. Patterson, 456 U.S. 63, 71 (1982); Quinn v.

Butz, 510 F.2d 743, 753 (D.C. Cir. 1975). See also Wachovia

Bank v. Schmidt, 926 S. Ct. 941, 945 (2006). We see no evi-

dence in the IDEA or the appropriations act that Congress

intended to vary parents’ entitlement to fees depending on

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whether the parents’ rights are vindicated administratively or

judicially.

Indeed, to the extent we can divine Congress’s intent in

enacting the fee cap, it seems more likely the District’s reading

of the statute would further that intent by enforcing strict limits

on the amount of fees that may be recovered. That “Calloway

clearly acknowledges Congress’s intent to ‘assist disabled

children in D.C.’ by limiting payment of attorneys’ fees so that

more funds can be allocated to direct services, rather than to

litigating IDEA claims” is not disputed by Appellees. Br. of

Appellees at 15.2 Cf. Calloway, 216 F.3d at 9 (considering the

possibility that Congress enacted the fee cap in order to

“produce additional resources for direct educational services,”

yielding “a net benefit for disabled children”).

IV

We therefore hold the term “action” in the fee cap provision

of the 2005 appropriations act encompasses both administrative

proceedings and subsequent fee requests brought in the district

court by prevailing parties. An award of fees for the underlying

educational dispute and an award of fees-on-fees are thus both

subject to a single application of the fee cap. The judgment of

the district court is therefore reversed.

So ordered.

2

Appellees may have conceded too much on this issue, as

Calloway involved only rational basis review of the fee cap; we

merely examined what Congress may have intended in enacting the

fee cap, rather than stating what it necessarily did intend. Calloway,

216 F.3d at 8-9.