Education Law

Supreme Court to hear cases relevant to schools

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases that raise important issues for the nation’s K-12 school districts.

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) is urging the Supreme Court in Staub v. Proctor Hospital to be heard on Tuesday afternoon, November 2, to protect employers from being held liable under federal anti-discrimination laws if they had legitimate reasons for firing an employee and were not aware that an employment recommendation they received may have been tainted by a supervisor?s bias.

The case stems from a complaint by a hospital employee, Vincent Staub, who was fired by a human resources manager who had received numerous complaints about his job performance. However, evidence later showed that some of the complaints came from two supervisors concerned about his obligations as a military reservist.

This case could severely impact most, if not all, school districts because their school boards rely on the recommendations and advice of superintendents and other supervisors when making decisions on individual employee. With school boards being the largest collective employer in the nation, schools boards have a vested interest in these types of labor cases.

In Winn v. Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization, to be heard on Wednesday morning, November 3, the Supreme Court will review Arizona’s tuition tax credit program that has diverted millions of dollars of public money to private religious schools. The program subsidizes tuition at private, largely religious schools, and lacks any public accountability measures.

NSBA believes the Arizona program harms public schools. While funding for public education in Arizona has declined in recent years, funding for this private, primarily religious-school scheme has grown to over $50 million a year. Rather than improving education for the vast majority of Arizona students, it has supplemented the tuition of almost 30,000 existing private school students.

Rulings in these cases will come out in a few months from now.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on November 01, 2010 (boomark / email).