The U.S. Supreme Court has now accepted for review the Winkleman case out of Ohio which has been pending on the Court’s docket. I wrote about this case some time ago. Since that time the Bush Administration’s Solicitor General’s office argued both for the Court to take the case and for the case to be decided in favor of parents’ right to represent their children in IDEA cases.
If this case is decided in favor of the parents’ case that will have practical implications for many other parents, who represent their children because they either can not afford to hire an attorney or no attorney is available who is qualified to take the case. In addition, in the course of deciding the case the Court could very well create "magic language" as to the centrality of parent’s role in the process of advocating at IEP meetings and other contexts, that could be helpful to parents even when a case is not at hearing. Stay tuned for what hopes to be positive legal developments after losses in the Shaffer [burden of proof on parents] and Arlington Central [no recovery of expert fees even when parents win] cases.