Columbus, OH – On Monday, The Buckeye Institute joined a coalition of nationally recognized policy and education groups in filing an amicus brief in the third case challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s guidance to distribute CARES Act funding in a fair and equitable manner that will help all schools safely reopen. This newest brief was filed in NAACP v. DeVos.

“As our coalition has argued in cases in Michigan and Washington, the U.S. Department of Education’s guidance is clearly consistent with the CARES Act and these lawsuits are doing nothing to safely reopen our schools and get our children safely back into the classroom,” said Jay R. Carson, senior litigator at The Buckeye Institute’s Legal Center. 

As with the Michigan and Washington cases, the NAACP filed suit to challenge the U.S. Department of Education’s commonsense rule, claiming that taxpayer-funded assistance should not be allocated to provide “equitable services” to “students and teachers in non-public schools” as called for in the CARES Act.

The brief was filed with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on August 24, 2020. The coalition was led by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

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UPDATE: September 4, 2020, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted the NAACP’s request for a permanent injunction.