A federal appellate court has upheld the dismissal of Connecticut’s lawsuit challenging the No Child Left Behind Act, although the judges made clear that the state should be able to pursue some of its claims administratively against the U.S. Department of Education.
The lawsuit alleged that the federal government could not require states to spend their own money on NCLB requirements because of the statute’s language barring unfunded mandates. The department had refused to grant Connecticut a waiver of annual testing requirements. The state claimed it had spent at least $41.6 million of its own money from 2002 to 2008 to comply with the law.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit decided last month that the central claim of the case was premature because the department had not taken enforcement action against the state.
