There are many challenges connected with the definition of ED and identifying students with ED. The federal definition of ED is vague and leaves a lot of ambiguity. This leads to individual interpretations. This is particularly true for the courts, where the majority of the case law is written. This is also an old definition which hasn’t been updated in years. A huge issue is that the federal definition of ED is different from the IDEA definition of an ED. The laws haven’t been made into a more concise version because politicians don’t want to exclude people who had previously been receiving services under the old definitions.