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
6
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.
9
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
10
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.