Update on the Bare Minimum Rule (previously 150% Rule)
Litigation and Regulatory Update
Through a novel and desperate approach, the Biden Department of Education late last year attempted to nullify the lawsuit brought by Cortiva Institute and the Coalition for Career Schools in the Northern District of Texas (360 Degree Education v. U.S. Department of Education, No. 4:24-cv-00508). This new policy approach adopted by the Department relates to the state authorization rules as they apply to state statutes and specifically to the Texas laws governing massage therapy programs.
It is instructive in considering how future Democratic administrations may approach lawsuits challenging an expansive use of authority to regulate schools in the for-profit sector. Perhaps more immediately important, it serves as an example of how critics of for-profit schools may try to achieve policy and legal victories in the states during the Trump administration’s control of the federal regulatory apparatus.
The Texas Statute – Tex. Occ. Code Ann. § 455.205(b)
For more than 20 years, the state statutes governing massage therapy programs in Texas have included a provision that prohibits Texas massage schools from requiring students to complete more hours than the number of hours required for licensure under those statutes (currently set at 500 hours).
Pursuant to this provision, Texas authorities have historically required Texas massage schools to notify their students that the students are not required to complete more than 500 hours in their massage therapy course in order to be licensed. Schools must then get an acknowledgment to that effect signed by each student. Under this interpretation of the Texas statute, although schools cannot require students to complete more than 500 hours, schools are able to offer a program that is more than 500 hours and students can voluntarily choose to participate in that program. Cortiva’s program is 600 hours.
