COVID-19 Summary: This is an action filed on July 22, 2020 by advocacy groups, public school districts, and parents of children who attend public schools. Plaintiffs sought injunctive and declaratory relief against the U.S. Department of Education for creating an agency rule that conflicts with the text of the CARES Act. The court granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs on September 4, 2020 and vacated the new rule.
This case is about the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES ACT), which was passed by Congress in March 2020 to provide economic relief to citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic. Certain provisions in the CARES Act appropriated billions of dollars in funding for elementary and secondary schools. In April 2020, the Department of Education ("DOE") issued guidance about CARES Act funding for private schools, stating that funds should be used to serve all non-public school students and teachers without regard to family income, residency, or eligibility based on low achievement. In the DOE’s view, the CARES Act forbids differentiation between public and private schools. This position was made binding in July 2020 with an interim final rule.
The plaintiffs in this case--the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, public school districts, and parents of children who attend public schools--filed suit against United States Department of Education in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on July 22, 2020. The case was assigned to Judge Dabney L. Friedrich.
On August 11, 2020, the plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction or, in the alternative, summary judgment. Plaintiffs asserted that the DOE’s actions were in violation of the separation of powers, that the formal rule created by the DOE violated the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and that the DOE violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) as an agency action not in accordance with law or statutory authority.
That same day, the plaintiffs also filed an amended complaint. This complaint added two additional APA claims: an arbitrary and capricious challenge and a challenge to the DOE's invocation of the "good cause" exception to notice-and-comment rulemaking. Since these two claims did not present pure questions of law, they were not consolidated into the expedited motion for summary judgment.
The defendants opposed the motion for summary judgment on the grounds that the plaintiffs did not show that the DOE acted without legal authority.
Judge Friedrich granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, vacating the DOE's interim final rule, on September 4, 2020. 2020 WL 5291406. Judge Friedrich determined that the CARES Act provided a particular formula for providing funds to private schools based on the number of children from low-income families. However, the CARES Act did not give the DOE discretion over any disbursements from any of the CARES Act’s provisions, so the DOE exceeded its authority in creating its formal rule about how funds are allocated. Because the APA fully resolved the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, the Judge Friedrich did not to rule on any of the constitutional questions.
Nicholas Gillan - 10/07/2020
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