College Sports Council v. Government Accountabil.
| Decision Date | 15 March 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. CIV.A.03-1911(RBW).,CIV.A.03-1911(RBW). |
| Citation | 421 F.Supp.2d 59 |
| Parties | COLLEGE SPORTS COUNCIL, Plaintiff, v. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Columbia |
Lawrence J. Joseph, Law Office of Lawrence J. Joseph, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff.
Peter Bryce, Joseph W. Lobue, US Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Defendants.
College Sports Council ("the plaintiff') brings this action against the United States of America, the Government Accountability Office ("GAO"), the Comptroller General, and multiple GAO employees (collectively "the defendants"),1 seeking declaratory and injunctive relief for "material misstatements" allegedly made in a 2001 GAO report to Congress concerning the opportunities for men's and women's participation in intercollegiate athletics. Amended Complaint ("Am.Compl.") ¶¶ 1-5, 7. The plaintiff contends that these alleged misstatements violated Section 805 of the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, the United States Constitution, and various federal ethical standards and professional duties. Id. ¶ 8. The plaintiff asks that the 2001 GAO Report be rescinded and that the defendants be made "expeditiously to prepare and disseminate a new report that meets the statutory criteria of Section 805." Id. ¶ 5. Currently before the Court is the defendants' motion to dismiss the plaintiffs complaint.2 For the reasons set forth below, the Court finds that the plaintiff has failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. The Court therefore grants the defendants' motion to dismiss.
The GAO is "an independent agency within the Legislative Branch that exists in large part to serve the needs of Congress." Bowsher v. Merck & Co., Inc., 460 U.S. 824, 844, 103 S.Ct. 1587, 75 L.Ed.2d 580 (1983). Moreover, the Comptroller General, as the head of the GAO, is "an Officer of the Legislative Branch." Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714, 731, 106 S.Ct. 3181, 92 L.Ed.2d 583 (1986). Among the Comptroller General's duties is an obligation to "make [any] investigation[s] and report[s] ordered by either House of Congress or a committee of Congress having jurisdiction over revenue, appropriations, or expenditures." 31 U.S.C. § 712(4) (2000).
In October 1998, Congress passed Section 805 of the Higher Education Amendments of 1998 ("Section 805"), a reporting statute requiring the Comptroller General to "conduct a study of the opportunities for participation in intercollegiate athletics" and to report the findings of the study to appropriate committees within both houses of Congress.3 Pub.L. No. 105-244 § 805, 112 Stat. 1807 (1998). The statute, entitled "Study of Opportunities for Participation in Athletics Programs," contained two subsections. The first subsection directed the Comptroller General to address, inter alia, the following issues for the twenty-year period preceding 1998:(1) the aggregate increase or decrease in interscholastic and intercollegiate athletic teams; (2) the aggregate increase or decrease in student participation in interscholastic and intercollegiate athletics; (3) the men's and women's interscholastic and intercollegiate sports "most affected by increases or decreases in levels of participation and [aggregate] numbers of teams"; (4) "all factors that have influenced campus officials to add or discontinue" interscholastic and intercollegiate athletic teams; (5) the budgetary impact of a school's decision "to increase or decrease the number of intercollegiate athletic teams or the participation of student-athletes"; and (6) "the alternatives, if any, institutions of higher education have pursued in lieu of eliminating or severely reducing the funding for an intercollegiate sport, and the success of such alternatives." Id. § 805(a). The second subsection required the Comptroller General to "submit a report regarding the results of the study to the Committee on Labor and Human Resources of the Senate and the Committee on Education and the Workforce in the House of Representatives." Id. § 805(b).
In March 2001, the GAO completed its study and issued a report entitled "Intercollegiate Athletics: Four-Year Colleges' Experiences Adding and Discontinuing Teams" to the appropriate congressional committees. GAO-01-297 (Mar. 8, 2001) ("2001 GAO Report"). The GAO stated at the outset of the report that while Section 805 "also required information on high school and 2-year college athletics, because of limited readily available information and the difficulty of collecting comparable information from these schools, as agreed with your offices, we focused only on 4-year intercollegiate athletics." Id. at 3 (emphasis added). The GAO then summarized its methodology:
To determine changes in the number of participants and teams at 4-year colleges and universities, we obtained statistics from the two largest national intercollegiate sports associations for 4-year colleges and universities—the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). Information for these schools covered 18 years—school years 1981-82 through 1998-99. . . . To gather information to respond to the other questions, we sent a questionnaire covering the 1992-93 to 1999-2000 school years to athletic directors at all 1,310 4-year schools that belong to one of these two associations .. . . Our work was done between February and December 2000 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Id. at 4. The GAO further stated that "the statistics provided by the NCAA and NAIA ... are the best available data and are widely used by researchers to study intercollegiate participation." Id. at 32. The report was signed by defendant Marnie Shaul, and copies were sent to the Secretary of Education, the NCAA and NAIA, and "other interested parties." Id. at 30.
On September 12, 2003, the plaintiff brought this action on behalf of its members, alleging that the GAO had not complied with the statutory requirements of Section 805.4 Complaint ("Compl.") ¶ 12-27. The plaintiff then filed a sprawling 64-page amended complaint on December 29, 2004, in which it expanded the laundry list of "material misstatements" allegedly contained in the 2001 GAO Report.5 Am. Compl. ¶¶ 40-95. The amended complaint also alleged that defendants GAO, Walker, and Shaul breached an array of ethical and professional duties through actions that were "fraudulent, constructively fraudulent, so gross a mistake as to constitute fraud, arbitrary, capricious, and not otherwise in accordance with the law." Id. ¶¶ 149-186. The plaintiff further asserts in the amended complaint that the apparent agreement between the GAO and the congressional committees to limit the scope of the study amounted to an amendment of Section 805 in violation of the bicameralism and presentment clauses of the United States Constitution. Id. ¶¶ 124-130, 144-148.6 Finally, the plaintiff filed a supplemental complaint on February 25, 2005, claiming that defendant Walker further breached his ethical duties by making public statements regarding the 2001 GAO Report. Supplemental Complaint ("Suppl.Compl.") ¶¶ 198-204.
On May 20, 2005, the defendants moved to dismiss this action, arguing that the plaintiff has failed to state a claim upon which any relief can be granted.7 Specifically, the defendant argues (1) that Section 805 does not provide a private right of action by which the plaintiff can sue to enforce compliance with its provisions, Def's Mem. at 23-25; (2) that the GAO is not an "agency" within the meaning of the Administrative Procedures Act ("APA"), id. at 25-28; (3) that, in any event, congressional reporting statutes are not generally subject to judicial review, id. at 21-23; (4) that the plaintiff has not alleged a colorable constitutional violation, id. at 20-21; (5) that the plaintiff has not set forth a cognizable claim for fraud or breach of an ethical duty, id. at 30-34, Defs.' Reply at 12-14; and (6) that the plaintiff has failed to state a claim under the Mandamus and Venue Act, Defs.' Reply at 19-22.
In return, the plaintiff asserts that "Section 805 imposes a clear duty to prepare a clearly defined study, and the ethical provisions impose a clear duty to notify parties ... relying on the report of its misstatements," Pl.'s Opp. at 27-28 (citations omitted), and contends that the GAO is an agency for the purposes of the APA, id. at 35-38. Further, the plaintiff reiterates that the defendants unconstitutionally "amended" Section 805 and that the Court's equity jurisdiction allows it to entertain the plaintiff's claims notwithstanding the absence of any express legal right of action. Id. at 33.
When evaluating a motion for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), the Court "must treat the complaint's factual allegations as true and must grant the plaintiff the benefit of all inferences that can be derived from the facts alleged." Sparrow v. United Air Lines, Inc., 216 F.3d 1111, 1113 (D.C.Cir. 2000) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). A complaint may be dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6) "only if it is clear that no relief could be granted under any set of facts that could be proved consistent with the allegations." Swierkiewicz v. Sorema, 534 U.S. 506, 514, 122 S.Ct. 992, 152 L.Ed.2d 1 (2002). However, the Court need not accept "inferences unsupported by facts set out in the complaint or legal conclusions cast as factual allegations." Rasul v. Rumsfeld, 414 F.Supp.2d 26, 30-31 (D.D.C.2006) (citations omitted). Moreover, "[blare conclusions of law and sweeping and unwarranted averments of fact will not be deemed admitted" for the purposes of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. M.K. v. Tenet, 99 F.Supp.2d 12, 17 (D.D.C.2000) (citing Haynesworth v. Miller, 820 F.2d 1245, 1254 (D.C.Cir.1987)).
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