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A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal government’s system of higher education accreditation, soundly rejecting all of the state’s legal arguments.
Florida’s lawsuit, filed last June, had argued that Congress “ceded unchecked power” to the nongovernmental accrediting agencies, violating the U.S. Constitution and ensuring that “private accrediting agencies enjoy near limitless power over state institutions.” The lawsuit asked the courts to permanently block the Education Department from enforcing accreditation-related provisions of the Higher Education Act, the main federal law governing colleges and universities.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Judge Jacqueline Becerra of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, rejected, one by one, the major arguments Florida made.
Most notably, she ruled that Congress had not delegated legislative functions to the accreditors and that the accreditation scheme does not violate the federal spending clause because federal funds governed by the Higher Education Act flow to students, not to states.
“The State’s sweeping criticism of the legislative scheme by which the federal government provides students with financial aid for their postsecondary education collapses distinct functions of the process, disregards undisputed facts, and then uses legal standards that are not controlling to urge the court to deny the motion,” Becerra wrote. “For the reasons articulated above, the State’s objection to the requirement that they comply with standards set by private agencies to receive federal dollars from its students simply fails to state a claim.”
