Florida Leads Fight Against Politicized Accreditation
Teresa R. Manning
October 15, 2024
On October 2, a trial court dismissed Florida’s lawsuit against the Biden Education Department, claiming that accreditation methods for institutions of higher education are illegal. But the state will almost certainly re-file its complaint or appeal to continue its fight against an accreditation system gone bad.
Florida says the current system is unconstitutional because it violates the nondelegation doctrine—specifically, because it gives accrediting agencies “near limitless power” over state colleges and universities. This unlimited power is now abused to impose leftist politics on schools and to interfere with the sovereign rights of Florida and other states to oversee education.
The nondelegation doctrine means that Congress cannot delegate or transfer its lawmaking power since the first Article of the Constitution invests this power exclusively in the legislative branch, the branch most accountable to the public. Congress can and does work with executive agencies which fill in details of legislative schemes, of course. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, can decide how much of a toxic substance constitutes unacceptable contamination; but only Congress—not the EPA—can decide to ban contaminants. This is also called the “major questions” doctrine, which simply means that only Congress gets to decide major questions of policy.
