Justia Education Law Opinion Summaries

The Foundation filed suit challenging a religious exercise at a local school board's meetings, including a prayer in the portion of the meeting that was open to the public and that included student attendees and participants. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment and injunctive relief to the Foundation, holding that invocations to start the open portions of school board meetings were not within the legislative prayer tradition that allowed certain types of prayer to open legislative sessions, because these prayers typically take place before groups of schoolchildren whose attendance was not truly voluntary and whose relationship to school district officials, including the school board, was not one of full parity. Applying the test in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612–13 (1971), the panel held that the Board's prayer policy lacked a secular legislative purpose and thus violated the Establishment Clause. The panel also held that the district court's injunction was not overbroad because it was limited to restricting only speech that constituted a governmental establishment of religion. View "Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. v. Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education" on Justia Law

The Supreme Court held that separation-of-powers principles do not prevent the judiciary from ruling on whether the Legislature has violated its duty under the Education Clause of the Minnesota Constitution or violated the Equal Protection or Due Process Clauses of the Minnesota Constitution.Appellants brought a putative class-action complaint on behalf of their children, public school students, claiming that the State had violated the Education, Equal Protection, and Due Process Clauses of the Minnesota Constitution. The court of appeals concluded that the claims presented nonjusticiable political questions. The Supreme Court reversed,holding that Appellants’ claims were justiciable.Specifically, the Court held (1) the courts are the appropriate domain for determinations as to whether the Legislature has violated its constitutional duty under the Education Clause; and (2) as to Appellants’ equal protection and due process claims, while the Legislature plays a critical role in education, “it is ultimately the judiciary’s responsibility to determine what our constitution requires and whether the Legislature has fulfilled its constitutional duty.” View "Cruz-Guzman v. State" on Justia Law

Chester Bailey Jr. was employed by the Independent School District No. 69 of Canadian County Oklahoma (“the School District”) as Director of Athletics from 2009 to 2016. Throughout his career, Bailey received positive evaluations, indicating that he “exhibited strong leadership abilities,” “demonstrat[ed] a high degree of integrity,” and was “an asset to the district.” Bailey's nephew, Dustin Graham, pled guilty in 2014 to various state charges largely stemming from video recordings he made of women in the bathroom of his apartment without their consent. Graham also pled guilty to a single count of manufacturing child pornography based on a video he recorded of a minor. There was considerable media coverage of Graham’s arrest, trial, and sentencing. During Graham’s sentencing proceedings in 2014, Bailey wrote a letter to the sentencing judge on Graham’s behalf. The School District does not issue its employees official letterhead but it was common practice for individuals to produce their own letterhead using the school logo and their titles. Bailey had created such a letterhead and used a sheet to write to Graham’s sentencing judge. The letter’s header contained the logo for the school district, and gave the address of the Department of Athletics and Bailey’s job title. More than thirty individuals wrote letters to the sentencing judge on Graham’s behalf, including his local state representative. In 2017, the Superintendent of Schools for the School District received a letter expressing concern that Bailey used School District letterhead in support of an individual convicted of a child pornography offense. The Superintended decided to recommend Bailey's termination, citing loss of trust in Bailey's judgment, for using the school letterhead to request leniency for Graham. After a due process hearing before the Board of Education, the Board terminated Bailey's employment. Bailey filed a complaint under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against the School District and Superintendent, alleging wrongful termination in retaliation for speech protected by the First Amendment. Concluding that Bailey’s speech did not relate to a matter of public concern, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the School District and the Superintendent. Bailey timely appealed. The issue this case presented on appeal to the Tenth Circuit was whether a letter written by a public employee, seeking a reduced sentence for his relative, speech on a matter of public concern for the purposes of a First Amendment "Garcetti/Pickering" inquiry. The Court determined it was, and reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgement favoring the School District. Nonetheless, the Court affirmed the district court’s grant of qualified immunity to school superintendent Sean McDaniel because the law was not previously clearly established on this issue. View "Bailey v. Independent School District No. 69" on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the school district and the Arkansas Department of Education, in an action alleging that plaintiffs' children were denied a free appropriate public education (FAPE) as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The court held that Child A and Child L were provided a FAPE and the district court did not err in rejecting their families' claims. The court noted that the district court's strategies, while they might have been imperfect, complied with the IDEA, included detailed strategies to address the children's behavioral problems and contained evidence that the children were progressing academically. The court held that Child S and Child G's claims were not administratively exhausted and the district court properly granted the district's motion for summary judgment on their claims. Finally, the district court did not abuse its discretion by excluding an expert report as a sanction for plaintiffs' failure to disclose the report on a timely basis, and the report was conclusory and non-specific and would not have materially impacted the court's analysis. View "Parrish v. Bentonville School District" on Justia Law

Charter school parents sought to intervene in the St. Louis public school desegregation litigation to enforce a 1999 Desegregation Settlement Agreement. The Eighth Circuit reversed the district court's denial of the charter parents' motion to intervene, holding that the charter parents had standing. In this case, their pleading alleged that the charter schools will suffer a loss of funding and a decline in funding if plaintiffs prevailed and tens of millions of dollars could be transferred from the charter schools. Therefore, such an injury was neither conjectural nor hypothetical, and was sufficiently imminent to constitute an injury in fact. The court also held that the charter parents have established the elements of traceability and redressability. The court remanded for the district court to determine in the first instance whether the charter parents meet the requirements under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24 for intervention as of right or for permissive intervention. View "Ross v. Special Administrative Board of the Transitional School District of the City of St. Louis" on Justia Law

The NAACP filed suit against the school district for voter dilution under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's finding that (1) the NAACP had proved the preconditions for a section 2 vote dilution claim, and (2) the totality of the circumstances indicated that the district's black voters had less opportunity to elect their preferred candidate than other members of the electorate. The court held that the district court found a section 2 violation after engaging in the requisite precondition analysis and conducting a thorough totality-of-the-circumstances balancing. View "NAACP v. Ferguson-Florissant School District" on Justia Law

At issue in this case were: (1) the extent of Kean University’s (Kean) notice obligations as a public body under the Open Public Meetings Act (the OPMA or the Act), and whether the notice for the personnel exception established in Rice v. Union County Regional High School Board of Education, 155 N.J. Super. 64, 73 (App. Div. 1977) (the Rice notice) applied here; (2) timing parameters for the release of minutes of meetings; and (3) the appropriate remedy if the OPMA was violated in the latter respect in this matter. Kean’s Board of Trustees (the Board), as a public body, is required to annually establish and publish a schedule of its regular meetings. Plaintiff Valera Hascup received a letter from the University President informing her that he would not nominate her for reappointment at the Board’s meeting scheduled for December 6, 2014. On November 29, 2014, the Board published a tentative agenda for the December meeting on the Kean University website, indicating that the Board intended to discuss faculty reappointments during the public meeting. It did not send a Rice notice. On December 18, 2014, co-plaintiff James Castiglione, a Kean professor and President of the Kean Federation of Teachers (KFT), filed an Open Public Records Act request seeking the minutes from the closed sessions of the September 15 and December 6, 2014 meetings. The Appellate Division affirmed the determination that the Board did not make the meeting minutes promptly available, but reversed and vacated a permanent injunction. The New Jersey Supreme Court found there was no obligation to send Rice notices here, where the Board determined from the start to conduct its discussion about faculty reappointments in public session. With respect to the release of meeting minutes, the delay that occurred was unreasonable no matter the excuses advanced by the Board, but the Court modified the Appellate Division’s holding requiring the Board to set a regular meeting schedule. View "Kean Federation of Teachers v. Morell" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal of an action alleging claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and the Texas Constitution after an assistant principal ordered a mass, suspicionless strip search of twenty-two female students in the sixth grade choir. After $50 went missing, the assistant principal ordered that each student be strip searched by the school nurse. The court held that the complaint alleged a claim for municipal liability where the students were searched in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights; plaintiffs adequately alleged an official municipal policy on which section 1983 liability may rest where the school district failed to train its employees about their legal duties not to conduct unreasonable searches; and, to the extent the amended complaint plausibly alleged deliberate indifference, it also plausibly alleged causation. The court also held that the district court erred by dismissing the Texas cause of action for failure to state a claim. View "Littell v. Houston Independent School District" on Justia Law

A majority of the Supreme Court held that the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Evers, may select his own lawyer to represent him in an action in which he has been sued in his official capacity, thus rejecting Petitioners’ argument that the Wisconsin Constitution and applicable statutes require the Department of Justice (DOJ) to represent Evers.Petitioners sought a declaratory judgment that Evers and the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) must comply with the REINS Act, 2017 Wis. Act 57. A dispute arose between DPI and DOJ regarding which entity would provide representation for Evers and DPI in this case. Evers and DPI claimed that they would not refer the matter to DOJ for representation. DOJ moved to strike the appearance by DPI’s in-house counsel. The Supreme Court held (1) Evers and DPI were entitled to counsel of their choice and were not required to be represented by DOJ; and (2) the governor was not a necessary party to this action. View "Koschkee v. Evers" on Justia Law

Melissa Spalt was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. When she refused to submit to a breath test, the arresting officer issued a "notice of suspension" of her driver's license. Spalt requested a hearing before the South Carolina Office of Motor Vehicle Hearings (OMVH) to challenge her suspension, as permitted by subsection 56-5-2951(B)(2). The OMVH scheduled a hearing for June 23, 2015, at 9:00 a.m. On June 18, Spalt's attorney notified the OMVH he was scheduled to be in court at the time of the new OMVH hearing. Spalt's attorney emailed the agency and hearing officer multiple times to reschedule the hearing; there was no indication in the record that the OMVH hearing officer responded to the attorney's last emails. At the time of the hearing, Spalt's attorney did not appear. The hearing officer entered an "Order of Dismissal", finding "Neither [Spalt] nor her counsel appeared at the hearing and therefore waived the right to challenge the pending suspension." The hearing officer did not conduct a hearing on the merits of the suspension. Spalt appealed to the ALC, which reversed and remanded to the OMVH for a hearing on the merits. The Department of Motor Vehicles appealed the ALC's order to the court of appeals, which dismissed the appeal on the basis the ALC's order was not immediately appealable. The Department appealed again to the South Carolina Supreme Court, but finding no error, the Supreme Court affirmed the court of appeals. View "Spalt v. South Carolina Dept. Motor Vehicles" on Justia Law