Tennessee Attorney General Asks Court To Dismiss Teachers Union Lawsuit “With Prejudice”
Image Credit: Blount County Schools / Facebook & tn.gov
Submitted by David Coleman –
I recently wrote about Blount County being ground zero for the teachers’ union lawsuit against the state. The Attorney General’s Office has submitted a MOTION TO DISMISS asking the court to “dismiss the case with prejudice” along with a memorandum in support of the motion.
Every quotation from below is from the latter. You can read the full text at TEA-Lawsuit-MTD.BCSdocs.com. I could provide my assessment of the motion, but the Attorney General’s Office has done a masterful job of dismantling the suit; I will simply quote them.
Please note that references to teachers below only pertain to the plaintiffs in this case and do not refer to teachers in general. Blount County’s representation in this lawsuit was from an employee of Central Office and a librarian who is also head of the local teacher’s union. The Xs below replace the name of the BCS Central Office staff member who took up 6 pages of the union’s lawsuit against the state.
Office of the Tennessee Attorney General:
The TEA’s assertion of standing rests entirely on its association with Teachers. But an association cannot sue on behalf of some “unknown member”; it must actually “identify a member who has suffered (or is about to suffer) a concrete and particularized injury from the defendant’s conduct.”
Teachers cannot show “an injury in fact . . . fairly traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant.”
Teachers seek to challenge the Act’s mere existence—not any threatened enforcement action. The Act has never been enforced against a teacher. One cannot, in good faith, conclude that a certain threat of enforcement exists, nor that Defendants have engaged in conduct that harms Teachers.
Teachers failed to identify any classroom teacher against whom an enforcement action was taken. Not one single educator has been disciplined as a result of the Act. It is, thus, hard to credit Teachers’ claim of a certain threat of enforcement.
Mere “moral outrage . . . does not endow [Teachers] with standing to sue.”
The Complaint dedicates six pages to the story of XXXXX XXXXXXXXX—who is not a plaintiff to this suit. The Complaint against XXXXXXXX concerned whether the book Dragonwings comported with the Act and Board Rules for 6th grade curriculum. It did not stem from the enforcement of the Act against a teacher’s classroom instruction.
