Background
Arlington Public Schools and Fairfax County Public Schools maintained policies allowing transgender and gender-expansive students to use bathrooms, locker rooms, and certain overnight accommodations consistent with their gender identity. After investigating, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights concluded that the policies violated Title IX and proposed resolution agreements requiring the districts to rescind them.
When the districts declined, the Department began administrative proceedings that could lead to suspension or termination of federal assistance. It also designated the districts as high-risk and required them to pay expenses with nonfederal money before seeking reimbursement from Department grants. The districts brought Administrative Procedure Act challenges, but the district court sua sponte dismissed their complaints in full, reasoning that the Tucker Act placed exclusive jurisdiction in the Court of Federal Claims because the suits essentially sought federal grant money.
The Court’s Holding
The Fourth Circuit vacated the dismissals and remanded. The majority held that the Tucker Act did not deprive the district court of jurisdiction over every claim in the complaints. At least some claims rested on Title IX and administrative law rather than contractual rights under the districts’ grants: the districts sought declarations that their policies complied with Title IX, vacatur of their high-risk designations, and an injunction against further Title IX enforcement based on those policies.
The court distinguished cases in which grant recipients sought orders enforcing federal contractual obligations to pay money. Although the district court might lack jurisdiction to order payment of withheld funds or grant similar monetary relief, that possibility did not justify dismissing the entire complaints. The Fourth Circuit did not decide the merits, ripeness, finality, or other threshold objections and left those issues for the district court. Judge Richardson dissented, concluding that the suits were fundamentally contractual claims seeking restoration of advance grant payments.
Key Takeaways
- A dispute involving federal grant payments is not necessarily a Tucker Act contract case when the asserted rights arise independently from a statute and administrative law.
- A court must evaluate distinct claims and requested remedies separately rather than dismiss an entire complaint merely because some requested relief may fall outside its jurisdiction.
- The decision addresses only subject-matter jurisdiction; it does not decide whether the districts’ policies comply with Title IX or whether their APA claims are otherwise reviewable.
Why It Matters
The ruling preserves a district-court avenue for at least some challenges to federal Title IX enforcement measures, even when those measures affect the timing or method of grant payments. It also limits the reach of recent decisions channeling grant-payment disputes to the Court of Federal Claims by distinguishing statutory enforcement challenges from suits seeking to compel contractual payment.
On remand, the district court must determine which claims and remedies may proceed and address the Department’s remaining threshold defenses before reaching the legality of the challenged policies or enforcement actions.