State Board Of Higher Education Files Suit With Supreme Court
If you’re curious, below is the lawsuit filed by the State Board of Higher Education against Secretary of State Al Jaeger aimed at keeping North Dakotans from voting on the Fighting Sioux nickname.
The Attorney General’s office argues, not surprisingly, that the State Board of Higher Education is a fourth branch of government that needn’t follow the laws of the legislature. The filing notes that the legislature does have the “power of the purse” over higher education, meaning the lawmakers control appropriations, but also notes that the state constitution requires the colleges to be appropriately funded.
Which really means that the legislature doesn’t even have the power of the purse.
It will be interesting to see the response from the legislature’s legal counsel, and I suspect the legal counsel for the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe will be be filing a brief in opposition to the SBHE as well.
If the Supreme Court rules that the SBHE is an autonomous entity with little to no oversight from the legislative or executive branches (and that’s how the Attorney General’s office wants the court to rule) then we need to enact reforms immediately to change that.
