Connecticut v. Spellings, No. 05-1330 (D. Conn. Sept. 27, 2006)
A federal district court in Connecticut has dismissed three of the four claims in the Connecticut’s suit challenging the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The ruling did not address the merits of any of the claims, only whether the court had jurisdiction to hear the claims. Regarding state’s first count that the testing required under NCLB violates the unfunded mandate provision in the statute itself because the state has had to expend state funds in excess of the federal funds provided for this purpose, the court found that the U.S. Congress precluded a pre-enforcement declaratory judgment under NCLB because under it provided for administrative review by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) for state testing schemes. As a result, the court concluded it lacked the subject matter jurisdiction to hear this claim. Even if ruling at this early premature stage were not precluded on that basis, the court declared, it would decline jurisdiction of the claim based on "prudential ripeness," because the issue would benefit from further factual development and would not impose an undue hardship on the state if the claim were not adjudicated at the present time. Regarding the state’s second count, which invoked the U.S. Constitution’s Spending Clause and the Tenth Amendment, the court found that those claims were paired with the first count and that the same reasoning therefore applied. Turning to the third count, which claimed that ED acted arbitrarily and capriciously in denying the state’s requests for waivers from NCLB’s accountability provisions, the court concluded that the denials were not reviewable because Congress had provided no statutory standards by which a court could measure ED’s reasons for denying the waivers. The court also rejected the state’s argument that ED’s disagreement with the state about how best to implement NCLB’s goals constituted abdication of the department’s responsibilities. As a result, the court ruled it lacked subject matter jurisdiction as to count three as well.
However, the court denied ED’s motion to dismiss count four. This count asserts that ED arbitrarily and capriciously denied the state’s requests for plan amendments in violation of the federal Administrative Procedures Act (APA) because ED failed to provide an adequate hearing prior to rejecting the state’s requests. While the court dismissed that portion of the state’s claim alleging that ED provided an inadequate hearing, because that part of the claim was now moot, it denied the motion to dismiss the part of the claim alleging that ED’s denial of the plan amendments violated the APA.
Connecticut v. Spellings, No. 05-1330 (D. Conn. Sept. 27, 2006)
[Link to full opinion]
[Editor’s Note: Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal insists that the remaining claim provides the state with the opportunity to pursue its central argument that the No Child Left Behind law promises adequate funding but has failed to provide it. "The denial of those amendments, we say, was wrong because the secretary misinterpreted the unfunded mandates provision of the law," he says. For this and other reactions, see the Hartford Courant coverage below. Background on the Connecticut suit is available at the second link.]
Hartford Courant
By Robert A. Frahm
[Link to full story]
[NSBA School Law pages on Connecticut v. Spellings]