Cefalu on Behalf of Cefalu v. East Baton Rouge Parish School Bd.

• Citation: 117 F.3d 231
• Decision Date: 03 July 1997
• Docket Number: No. 95-31045,95-31045
• Parties: 119 Ed. Law Rep. 338, 23 A.D.D. 139 Charles Tony CEFALU, Jr., Behalf of his minor son rpi Charles Tony CEFALU, III, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. EAST BATON ROUGE PARISH SCHOOL BOARD; State of Louisiana, Through the Department of Education, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit)

Page 231

117 F.3d 231

119 Ed. Law Rep. 338, 23 A.D.D. 139

Charles Tony CEFALU, Jr., Behalf of his minor son rpi

Charles Tony CEFALU, III, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. EAST BATON ROUGE PARISH SCHOOL BOARD; State of Louisiana, Through the Department of Education, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 95-31045.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

July 3, 1997.

Tammy Lynn Pruet, Department of Public Safety and Corrections, Video Gaming Division, Baton Rouge, LA, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Robert L. Hammonds, Hammonds & Sills, Baton Rouge, LA, for East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, Defendant-Appellant.

Gwendolyn H. Gregory, Alexandria, VA, for National School Board Association (NSBA), Amicus Curiae.

Scott S. Partridge, Frilot, Partridge, Kohnke & Clements, New Orleans, LA, Douglas Richard Cyrex, Monique C. Duplessis, Gonzales, LA, for Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf (A.G.Bell), National Association of the Deaf (NAD), National Cued Speech Association (NCSA), and Louisiana Association of the Deaf (LAD), Amicus Curiae.

Frank A. Rosenfeld, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Civil Division, Washington, DC, for Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, Amicus Curiae.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.

Before POLITZ, Chief Judge, and JOLLY and BARKSDALE, Circuit Judges.

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING

E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge:

The petitions for panel rehearing are granted.

On January 3, 1997, the opinion in this case issued, vacating the judgment of the district court in favor of the plaintiff and remanding the case for further consideration in the light of our opinion. 103 F.3d 393 (5th Cir.1997). All parties filed petitions for rehearing. We then asked the United States Department of Education, the agency in charge of administering the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ("IDEA"), to submit an amicus curiae brief to assist us in interpreting this vague and difficult statute as it applies to the obligation of the school district to provide the plaintiff with an on-site sign language interpreter at a parochial school in which he was voluntarily enrolled by his parents.

The Department of Education took the position that the statute imposed no obligation on the school district to provide the services on-site so long as an appropriate free public education had been made available to the student. The Department noted that only a small percentage of the cost of the special education services was derived from the federal grants under IDEA and that the remainder of the costs were paid through the use of local and state funds. Under the Department's interpretation, the IDEA does not require a school district to expend its non-federal funds for the provision of special education services to students voluntarily enrolled in private schools. Instead, the agency must make a free appropriate public education available to all disabled students and shall provide a proportionate share of federal funds to students voluntarily enrolled in private schools. In short, the Department concluded that the result reached in the dissenting opinion was correct.

Furthermore, after we issued our opinion, Congress recognized the difficulty arising from judicial efforts to interpret the IDEA and enacted clarifying amendments in order to "resolve ... the subject of an increasing amount of litigation in the last few years." S.Rep. No. 17, 105th Cong., 1st Sess. 13 (1997). These amendments specifically state that an agency is...