Kola Hasanaj v. Detroit Public Schools Community District, et al.

Did Federal and State statutes targeting education reform to ensure access to high quality public education for all and specifically for immigrant, black and minority students, impose an enforceable mandate on individual school districts to comply with those legislative mandates?

May Respondent Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD), a perfect example of a District which was targeted because it embodied all of the problems and inequalities that the No Child Left Behind Act and subsequent legislation sought to address, evade implementation of such laws by illegally assigning teachers to classrooms outside their certified subject area, ignoring requirements of teacher evaluation laws, and then terminating them “to insulate itself from its violative conduct”? Dissenting Op., App. 31a.

When a State enacts an education-reform law mandating a uniform statewide system to evaluate all teachers (regardless of tenure) and determine if they qualify for tenure, is this “mandatory language” binding on school districts that thus creates a Due Process expectation among teachers that the law will be followed?

Does removing a teacher from teaching implicate a teacher’s Due Process property right in his or her teaching certificate and his liberty right to seek employment, under this Court’s precedents?