Denver Newsroom, Apr 22, 2022 / 14:57 pm
Despite a State of California report saying that the Los Angeles Unified School District wrongly withheld federal funding from Catholic schools that serve poor students, a judge has said the archdiocese still needs to make its case first through administrative action, not through a lawsuit.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Douglas Stern said April 20 that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ lawsuit against the public school district is “not ripe,” given that the dispute is still in an administrative process.
The public school district appealed the relevant California Department of Education decision to the U.S. Department of Education, and the appeal has been pending for more than eight months. The archdiocese had filed its lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court in December as a back-up plan and in anticipation that the federal government will rule in its favor but the school district will continue to refuse funds, Courthouse News reports.
Kevin Troy, the archdiocese’s attorney, argued in court that the archdiocese’s suit is similar to a case from a consortium of Jewish schools which had followed the administrative procedures and are still waiting for the school district to comply with the law.