Association of American Medical Colleges v. Carey

• Decision Date: 12 January 1990
• Docket Number: No. 79-CV-730.,79-CV-730.
• Parties: ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN MEDICAL COLLEGES, Plaintiff, v. Hugh L. CAREY, Individually and as Governor, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of New York

728 F. Supp. 873

ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN MEDICAL COLLEGES, Plaintiff, v. Hugh L. CAREY, Individually and as Governor, et al., Defendants.

No. 79-CV-730.

United States District Court, N.D. New York.

January 12, 1990.

Fulbright & Jaworski (Robert A. Burgoyne, of counsel), Washington, D.C., for plaintiff.

Robert Abrams, Atty. Gen., State of N.Y. (David B. Roberts, Asst. Atty. Gen., of counsel), Albany, N.Y., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM-DECISION AND ORDER

McCURN, Chief Judge.

I. Introduction

The plaintiff is moving for summary judgment on its claims that portions of New York's Standardized Testing Act, N.Y.Educ.Law §§ 340-348, (generally known as the "Truth-in-Testing" Act), are (1) invalid due to preemption by federal copyright law and regulations, (2) infringe upon plaintiff's ownership rights under federal copyright law, or (3) violate the United States Constitution. Plaintiff, the Association of American Medical Colleges (the "AAMC"), seeks a declaratory judgment as well as a permanent injunction barring enforcement of what has been termed the "disclosure provisions" of the State Act. The AAMC is the copyright owner of the Medical College Admission Test (the "MCAT") as well as a number of MCAT related studies. The disclosure provisions, N.Y.Educ.Law §§ 341, 341-a, and 342, generally require the plaintiff to disclose MCAT test questions, answers, answer sheets, and related research reports which are employed by plaintiff as part of its sponsorship of the MCAT. In short, the plaintiff seeks to use federal copyright laws as a shield against enforcement of the State Act — thereby keeping the MCAT test questions secret. The central legal question presented is whether the disclosure requirements of New York's Standardized Testing Act clash with rights conferred upon plaintiff by the Federal Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq., in a manner which compels this court to find the State Act invalid by virtue of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

This matter has now been pending for almost a decade. Upon the plaintiff's Rule 65 application, this court, on January 21, 1980, preliminary enjoined the enforcement of N.Y.Educ.Law §§ 341 and 342 as against the plaintiff until resolution of this action. Association of American Medical Colleges v. Carey, 482 F.Supp. 1358, 1364 (N.D.N.Y.1980). The Standardized Testing Act has subsequently been amended, incorporating additional disclosure requirements which have also been challenged by the AAMC.

II. Issue

The amended complaint asserts twelve separate causes of action against the Governor of the State of New York, the State Attorney General, the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, and New York's Commissioner of Education. The defendants have been found to be proper parties due to their enforcement responsibilities with respect to the education law. See Association of American Medical Colleges v. Carey, 482 F.Supp. at 1362-64.

The first five counts assert that the disclosure provisions are invalid because they encroach upon ownership rights granted to plaintiff by the Federal Copyright Act of 1976. Count I asserts that the challenged portions of the New York Standardized Testing Act conflict with the exclusive ownership rights granted to the plaintiff under the Federal Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 106(1), (3), and (5), and are thereby preempted under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Plaintiff also claims that the New York Act is preempted due to a conflict with validly promulgated federal copyright regulations. Count II alleges that defendants, by acting in accordance with the disclosure provisions of the New York Act, will compel the plaintiff to reproduce and distribute copyrighted MCAT test forms and studies, thereby aiding in the unauthorized distribution of these documents. By so doing, the defendants allegedly will be interfering in federal rights conferred by the Copyright Act — a statutory activity which plaintiff believes is expressly preempted by section 301 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 301(a). Count III alleges that the disputed provisions of the New York Act will require the plaintiff to disclose MCAT materials. This forced disclosure will allegedly constitute an infringement upon plaintiff's ownership rights in copyrighted material in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 501(a). Count IV asserts that the disclosure provisions of the New York Act will cause the defendants to engage in vicarious and contributory infringement upon plaintiff's ownership rights. Count V asserts that the New York Act will cause the defendants, as part of a governmental entity, to seize and expropriate the plaintiff's ownership rights, a violation of 17 U.S.C. § 201(e).

The remaining allegations of the complaint assert claims for relief under provisions of the Federal and State Constitutions. The parties, however, have focused their argument here on the merits of the copyright claims, agreeing that this court must attempt to resolve the statutory issues before reaching the constitutional causes of action. See Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U.S. 528, 543, 94 S.Ct. 1372, 1382, 39 L.Ed.2d 577 (1974). Defendants assert and plaintiff admits, see Plaintiff's Reply Memorandum of Law at 2, that the claims based on the New York State Constitution are not properly before this court. Therefore, Counts VII, VIII, X, and XII are dismissed.

III. Legal Background

A. The Standardized Testing Act

The Standardized Testing Act imposes a number of obligations on organizations which develop or sponsor "any test that is given in New York at the expense of the test subject and which is designed for use and is used in the process of selection for post-secondary or professional school admissions." N.Y.Educ.Law § 340(1). The Act specifically includes within its provisions the Medical College Admission Test. Id. It is undisputed that the AAMC is a "test agency" as that term is defined by § 340(4) of the Act and therefore properly subject to its dictates.¹ In this action plaintiff is challenging the disclosure provisions of the Truth in Testing Act, namely sections 341, 341-a, and 342.

Section 341 (entitled "Background reports") requires that "whenever any test agency prepares or causes to have prepared research which is used in any study, evaluation or statistical report pertaining to a test operational after January first, nineteen hundred eighty, such study, evaluation or report shall be filed" with the New York State Commissioner of Education ("the Commissioner"). Id. at § 341(1). These reports must have all information with respect to a test subject or user institution redacted from the document. Id. at § 341(2). All testing agencies, within thirty days after the results of a standardized test are released, must also file with the Commissioner (1) a copy of all test questions actually used in calculating a test taker's raw score (experimental or developmental questions are excluded from disclosure), (2) the correct answers to these questions, and (3) the rules governing the method by which a raw score is calculated along with an explanation of these rules. Id. at § 342(1).

Within ninety days after the filing required by § 342(1), the test agency must provide a test taker with the "opportunity to secure" (1) a copy of the test questions used to calculate the test subject's raw score, (2) a copy of the test subject's answer sheet along with a copy of the correct answers, and (3) the test subject's raw score. Id. at § 342(2). Due to a concern that standardized tests may be biased in some manner, section 341-a was added to the Standardized Testing Act in 1987. This provision requires the testing agency to prepare detailed statistical reports — categorized by race, ethnicity, gender and linguistic background — relating to performance on tests and test questions given between July 1, 1988, and July 1, 1989. Id. at §§ 341-a(4), 341-a(5). These reports are to be filed with a ten-person advisory committee to the state legislature not later than September 1, 1989. The advisory committee, in turn, is required to report to the legislature. Id. at §§ 341-a(5), 346-a. "Any test agency which violates any section of the Act shall be liable for a civil penalty of not more than five hundred dollars for each violation." Id. at § 347. It should be noted that the Standardized Testing Act only applies to exams administered within New York. Id. at § 340(1).

The disclosure provisions of the Act designate all documents filed with the Commissioner of Education or with the legislative advisory committee as "public records." The parties do not dispute that the New York Freedom of Information Law ("FOIL"), N.Y.Pub.Off.Law § 84 et seq., provides that all documents designated as "public records" must be made available to the public for inspection upon request. Id. at § 87(2). Therefore, as plaintiff points out, the Truth in Testing Act, if applied, would make MCAT test questions available to the Commissioner of Education, the examinees, the legislative advisory committee, and the general public. It would also make these materials available for review by organizations engaged in the business of coaching students for the MCAT.

B. The Copyright Act of 1976

Congress, through the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq., set out to "accomplish a fundamental and significant change" in the law of copyright.² "Instead of a dual system of `common law copyright' for unpublished works and statutory copyright for published works, which had been the system in effect in the United States since the first copyright statute in 1790, the bill adopted a single system of Federal statutory copyright from creation." Committee on the Judiciary, House Report No. 94-1476, U.S.Code Cong. & Admin. News 1976, p. 5659, reprinted in 17 U.S. C.A. § 301 (West 1989). See also Roth v. Pritikin, 710 F.2d 934, 938-39 (2nd Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 961, 104 S.Ct. 394, 78 L.Ed.2d 337 (1983) (legislative...