The 7-to-2 decision involved an interpretation of the federal law that gives all children the right to a “free appropriate public education,” regardless of disability. Millions of children receive benefits under the law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Most federal appeals courts have ruled that when a dispute brings families and school districts into court, the parents cannot proceed without a lawyer.
Many parents, including the couple from Parma, Ohio, who brought this case, either cannot afford a lawyer or cannot find one. Increasingly, school districts have been bringing parents who seek to handle their own cases into court on charges of violating state statutes against the “unauthorized practice of law.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling will therefore change the status quo in many parts of the country, opening federal courthouse doors that were previously closed to parents. The Bush administration supported the parents in this case, Jeff and Sandee Winkelman, who were represented in the Supreme Court without charge by a lawyer from Los Angeles, Jean-Claude André.
The court’s analysis, in a majority opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, was based on the conclusion that the statute guarantees rights not only to children, but also to their parents. Consequently, Justice Kennedy said, when parents go to court to protest the school district’s proposal for their child, they are representing their own interests, as everyone is entitled to do in any federal court case, and are not acting as the unauthorized lawyers for someone else.
One of the oldest federal laws on the books, derived from the original Judiciary Act of 1789, provides that “in all courts of the United States the parties may plead and conduct their own cases personally or by counsel.”
Whether parents may represent their child in court, as opposed to themselves, is a question “we need not reach,” Justice Kennedy said, in light of the majority’s conclusion that the interests of parents and children in a child’s education are inextricably intertwined. The decision by Congress to recognize parental rights under the statute was “fully in accord with our social and legal traditions,” Justice Kennedy said.
The two dissenters were Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. In an opinion by Justice Scalia, they said the statute permitted parents to represent themselves in certain administrative proceedings, like a hearing on whether they are entitled to reimbursement for private school expenses.
But while the statute gives parents a right to reimbursement under certain circumstances, Justice Scalia argued, the “substantive right” to a “free appropriate public education” belongs not to the parent but to the child, “for it is he who receives the education.”
Justice Scalia continued: “The parents of a disabled child no doubt have an interest in seeing their child receive a proper education. But there is a difference between an interest and a statutory right.”
The case, Winkelman v. Parma City School District, No. 05-983, began with the parents’ dissatisfaction with the school district’s educational plan for the youngest of their five children, Jacob, who has a form of autism. Unable to afford a lawyer, they filed their own lawsuit in Federal District Court in Cleveland. They lost, and while the case was on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in another case that parents bringing such suits could not proceed without a lawyer.
The appeals court, based in Cincinnati, ordered the Winkelmans’ case dismissed unless they retained a lawyer within 30 days. Justice John Paul Stevens, who oversees the Sixth Circuit, granted a stay of that order to enable the Supreme Court to decide what to do.
The court asked the Bush administration for the views of the Department of Education, which agreed with the Winkelmans. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement urged the justices to accept the parents’ appeal and overturn the Sixth Circuit’s decision.
The National School Board Association and other school management groups entered the case on the side of the school district. They warned that allowing parents to proceed without lawyers would “increase the already burdensome costs of special-education litigation” because parents lack professional experience and judgment and would be “emotionally invested in the outcome of the case.”
Of the Parma district’s 13,000 students, 2,200, or about 17 percent, are identified as special-education students, a proportion similar to that in many other districts. School districts frequently complain that while they must comply with many federal requirements for special education, there is less and less federal money available.
In another action on Monday, the court dismissed an appeal brought by the State of Missouri in a death penalty case. The case, Roper v. Weaver, No. 06-313, was argued two months ago, with the state maintaining that a federal appeals court improperly granted habeas corpus to a death row inmate, William Weaver.
In an unsigned opinion, over the dissenting votes of Justices Scalia, Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., the court said that on reconsideration and for procedural reasons, fairness to the defendant required dismissal. Justice Scalia, joined by the other two dissenters, denounced the result as “a rare manifestation of judicial clemency unrestrained by law.”