Suit Challenging NCLB Costs Is Dismissed

Rejecting NEA’s position, U.S. judge says Congress may impose mandates.

The nation’s largest teachers’ union lost the first round in its high-profile legal challenge to the No Child Left Behind Act, as a federal judge in Michigan ruled that Congress may require states and school districts to spend their own money to comply with the school improvement law.

In a Nov. 23 decision that the National Education Association and the other plaintiffs plan to appeal, Chief Judge Bernard A. Friedman of the U.S. District Court in Detroit agreed with lawyers for Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who was the named defendant in the lawsuit, that the plaintiffs’ suit had failed to state a valid federal claim.

The suit hinges on a provision of the law that says “nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the federal government to … mandate a state or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid...