Blount-Hill v. Bd. of Educ. of State of Ohio, No. 05-4354 (6th Cir. Sept. 5, 2006)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has upheld a federal district court’s denial of the petition of White Hat Management, a professional education management firm, to intervene in a lawsuit challenging the Ohio’s Community Schools Act, which provides state funding for charter schools. In a September decision, the court agreed with the lower court that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which govern federal court proceedings, did not provide as a matter of right or a matter of discretion for the firm’s intervention in a suit brought by a coalition of parents and a teachers’ union challenging the act’s constitutional validity under state and federal law. However, the Sixth Circuit reached its decision as to intervention as a matter of law on different grounds than did the district court. The appeals court found the lower court had properly applied the four prong test for intervention, which considers: (1) the timeliness of the application to intervene; (2) the applicant’s substantial legal interest in the case; (3) impairment of the applicant’s ability to protect that interest if it cannot intervene; and (4) inadequate representation of that interest by the parties already before the court. While the district court concluded that White Hat had satisfied all but the fourth prong, the Sixth Circuit found that White Hat also had failed to establish that it has a substantial legal interest, because its interest in upholding the constitutionality of the act is primarily economic. White Hat’s claimed interest did not concern the violations alleged in the litigation, the court determined, but merely an interest in the economic component insufficient to comprise a substantial legal interest for purposes of intervention. White Hat "can protect its economic interests in contract negotiations with the State by lobbying the legislative and executive branches for favorable funding arrangements." As for the portion of the petition that sought to intervene as a matter of discretion, the appellate court agreed with the lower court that White Hat’s presence in the litigation "would result only in the duplication of the efforts of the existing Defendants and undue delay of the litigation."
Blount-Hill v. Bd. of Educ. of State of Ohio, No. 05-4354 (6th Cir. Sept. 5, 2006)
[Full opinion]
[Editor’s Note: The case in which the company sought to intervene was decided in October by the Ohio Supreme Court and is summarized below. The court upheld the state’s charter school funding law.]
[NSBA School Law pages on Ohio Congress of Parents and Teachers v. State of Ohio Bd. of Educ.]