The U.S. Supreme Court last month declared that a school district could not be held responsible for paying experts whom parents hired for assistance in a special education case.

In Arlington Central School District Board of Education v. Murphy et Vir, the high court ruled on June 26 that the parents could not recover expert fees under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the federal special education law.

The court ruled, 5-4, that the parents in an IDEA case could not be repaid for costs to hire educational consultants because the IDEA does not specifically allow for the reimbursement of expert fees to the winners of a case, as it does for attorney fees.