Maryland v. U.S. Dep't of Educ.
| Decision Date | 17 July 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 1:17-cv-2139 (KBJ),1:17-cv-2139 (KBJ) |
| Citation | 474 F.Supp.3d 13 |
| Parties | State of MARYLAND, et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Columbia |
Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, Christopher John Madaio, Office of the Attorney General of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, for Plaintiff State of Maryland.
Michael John Fischer, Jacob Boyer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, Yael Shavit, Office of the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, for Plaintiff Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Bernard Ardavan Eskandari, California Department of Justice, Los Angeles, CA, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff People of the State of California.
John A.B. Langmaid, Joseph J. Chambers, Office of the Attorney General, Hartford, CT, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff State of Connecticut.
Christian Douglas Wright, Delaware Department of Justice, Wilmington, DE, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff State of Delaware.
Benjamin Michael Wiseman, Office of the Attorney General Office of Consumer Protection, Washington, DC, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff District of Columbia.
Bryan Chien Yee, Thomas Francis Mana Moriarty, Department of the Attorney General, Honolulu, HI, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff State of Hawaii.
Joseph Michael Sanders, Gregory Wood Jones, Illinois Attorney General's Office, Chicago, IL, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff People of the State of Illinois.
Jessica Whitney, Iowa Attorney General's Office, Des Moines, IA, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff State of Iowa.
Jason Timothy Pleggenkuhle, Minnesota Attorney General's Office, St. Paul, MN, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff State of Minnesota.
Jane Melissa Azia, Carolyn Fast, Office of the New York Attorney General, New York, NY, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff State of New York.
Matthew Liles, North Carolina Department of Justice, Raleigh, NC, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff State of North Carolina.
Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, Katherine A. Campbell, Oregon Department of Justice, Portland, OR, for Plaintiff State of Oregon.
Edmund Francis Murray, Jr., Neil F. X. Kelly, Office of the Attorney General, Providence, RI, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff State of Rhode Island.
Christopher James Curtis, Office of the Attorney General, State of Vermont, Montpelier, VT, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff State of Vermont.
Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, Samuel Thurston Towell, Mark Stanley Kubiak, Office of the Attorney General of Virginia, Richmond, VA, for Plaintiff Commonwealth of Virginia.
Jeffrey Todd Sprung, Office of the Washington Attorney General, Seattle, WA, Michael John Fischer, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff State of Washington.
Kathryn L. Wyer, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Defendants.
KETANJI BROWN JACKSON, United States District Judge In 2014, the United States Department of Education ("DOE") promulgated a series of regulations that were designed to counteract the deceptive marketing that certain for-profit colleges and universities use to entice students to take on large amounts of debt in order to pursue what can turn out to be worthless degrees or credentials. See generally Program Integrity: Gainful Employment , 79 Fed. Reg. 64,890 (Oct. 31, 2014). These regulations became effective on July 1, 2015, but were not immediately implemented. And the DOE that came to power with the change of presidential administrations in 2017 delayed implementing these regulations, or modified them altogether, while it undertook to formulate a new set of policies.
Consequently, eighteen States ("the States") filed the instant lawsuit against the DOE and its Secretary, Elisabeth Devos, in her official capacity (collectively, "Defendants"), claiming that the agency's delay in implementing the rule was procedurally improper and substantively invalid under the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA"), Pub. L. 79-404, 60 Stat. 237 (1946) (), and seeking a court order requiring the DOE to begin enforcing the 2014 regulations in earnest. (See Am. Compl., ECF No. 65-2, at 32 "Prayer for Relief"). This Court entertained briefing and oral argument related to a series of dispositive motions that both parties subsequently filed, and on June 26, 2020, the Court issued an Order that dismissed the States’ complaint for lack of Article III standing. (See Order of June 26, 2020, ECF No. 106.)
The instant Memorandum Opinion explains the reasons for that Order. In short, none of the three nonsovereign injuries that the States have asserted concerning this matter constitutes an injury in fact that can be deemed fairly traceable to the challenged agency actions, and the States cannot base their standing on a quasi-sovereign injury in this case—i.e. , they cannot bring a parens patriae action to remedy alleged harm to their citizens—because such suits do not lie against the federal government when the States’ legal claims are brought under the APA. Thus, even if the States’ arguments about the impropriety of the DOE's stalling tactics are legally meritorious, this Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to entertain the claims the States’ bring here. Accordingly, and as set forth in the Court's June 26th Order, the DOE's motion to dismiss has been GRANTED , and the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment have been DENIED AS MOOT .1
In 1965, Congress enacted Title IV of the Higher Education Act ("HEA"), Pub. L. No. 89-329, 79 Stat. 1219 (1965), which authorizes the federal government to provide financial aid to students at post-secondary institutions of higher learning, see, e.g. , 20 U.S.C. § 1070. This federally sponsored educational loan program "provide[s] more than $150 billion in new federal aid" to students at post-secondary schools every year, Ass'n of Private Sector Colleges & Univs. v. Duncan , 681 F.3d 427, 435 (D.C. Cir. 2012), and that money supports students who attend a wide array of post-secondary institutions, including "private for-profit institutions, public institutions, and private nonprofit institutions[,]" id. The students who receive these loans are expected to repay their debt to the federal government eventually; otherwise, "their failure to do so shifts [those students’] tuition costs onto taxpayers." Id. But the post-secondary institutions that such students attend stand to benefit from this federal financial aid regardless, even if the students are not ultimately able to repay the loans, because the loan proceeds are tendered to the schools upfront to pay for the students’ tuition. See id. Thus, to guard "against abuse by schools[,]" Congress enacted a series of statutory requirements that are intended to discourage post-secondary educational institutions from taking students’ (and thus taxpayers’) money without providing those students with a quality education. Id.
One of these statutory protections is the requirement that, "to be an eligible institution for the purposes of any [Title IV] program[,]" the institution "must be an institution of higher education[,]" 20 U.S.C. § 1094(a), which the HEA defines in relevant part as either a "proprietary institution of higher education" or a "postsecondary vocational institution[,]" id. § 1002(a)(1)(A)–(B). The statute then specifically defines those terms to include only those schools that provide "an eligible program of training to prepare students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation[.]" Id. § 1002(b)(1)(A)(i), (c)(1)(A) (emphasis added). In other words, if an educational program does not "prepare students for gainful employment," then the students who attend that program are ineligible for federal financial aid, and the schools will not receive taxpayer-funded tuition dollars. Notably, however, the statute does not define the term "gainful employment"; instead, it vests the DOE Secretary with the authority to "make, promulgate, issue, rescind, and amend rules and regulations governing" Title IV programs, id. § 1221e–3, which includes the authority to define via regulation what constitutes "gainful employment," Ass'n of Private Sector Colleges & Univs. v. Duncan , 110 F. Supp. 3d 176, 182 (D.D.C. 2015) (hereinafter " APSCU III ").
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