Keith v. Louisiana Department of Education

93 F.R.D. 820, 1981 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17414
CourtDistrict Court, M.D. Louisiana
DecidedDecember 2, 1981
DocketCiv. A. No. 81-989-B
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 93 F.R.D. 820 (Keith v. Louisiana Department of Education) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Keith v. Louisiana Department of Education, 93 F.R.D. 820, 1981 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17414 (M.D. La. 1981).

Opinion

POLOZOLA, District Judge.

James Helis and eight other individuals have filed a motion to intervene in this litigation brought by Senator Bill Keith and numerous other parties which seeks a judgment declaring that the Louisiana Balanced Treatment Act (Act 685 of the 1981 Legislature), R.S. 17:286.1 et seq., 286.7, is constitutional.

Applicants contend that they are entitled to intervene of right under the provisions of Rule 24(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In the alternative, applicants request that they be permitted to intervene pursuant to the Court’s discretionary power under Rule 24(b)(2).

On March 8,1982, the Court denied applicants’ motion to intervene and noted that it would assign written • reasons for its decision at a later date. The Court now files its written reasons in support of its decision rendered on March 8, 1982.

The plaintiffs have filed this suit pursuant to the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2201 et seq. Plaintiffs contend that jurisdiction is conferred upon the Court under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 and the First, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. This suit was filed on behalf of the plaintiffs by William J. Guste, Jr., the Attorney General for the State of Louisiana. Named as defendants in the original complaint were the Louisiana Department of Education, J. Kelly Nix, Superintendent of Education, the State of Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) and the individual members of the BESE Board. Prior to any responsive pleadings being filed, plaintiffs filed their first amended complaint which added additional parties as plaintiffs herein. Thereafter, a second amended complaint was filed which added the Orleans Parish School Board and the St. Tammany Parish School Board as defendants. After this second amended complaint was filed, applicants filed a motion to intervene as defendants and a motion to dismiss this suit.

Rule 24(a)(2) requires those who seek to intervene as a matter of right to satisfy four separate requirements:

1) the motion must be filed timely;

2) applicant must have an interest in the subject matter of the litigation;

3) the applicant must demonstrate a practical impairment of or impediment to those interests which would flow from the Court’s refusal to allow the applicant to intervene; and

4) the applicant’s interest cannot be adequately protected by the parties already in the litigation.

NAACP v. New York, 413 U.S. 345, 93 S.Ct. 2591, 37 L.Ed.2d 648 (1973).

Unless the applicant satisfies each of the four requirements set forth above, the applicant is not entitled to intervene as a matter of right. NAACP v. New York, supra; United States v. State of Louisiana, 90 F.R.D. 358 (E.D.La.1981), affirmed 669 F.2d 314 (5 Cir. March 5, 1982). Assuming without deciding that applicants have satisfied the first two of the requirements set forth above, applicants have failed to prove that their interest, if any, will be impaired if they are not permitted to intervene and that their interest cannot be protected by the parties already in this litigation. Therefore, the Court finds that applicants should not be allowed to intervene as a matter of right under Rule 24(b)(2) because their interests are adequately protected by the present state and parish defendants and their interests will in no way be impaired by such representation.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals set forth the general test for determining adequacy of representation in Martin v. Kalvar Corp., 411 F.2d 552, 553 (5 Cir. 1969) as follows:

“Representation is adequate if no collusion is shown between the representative and an opposing party, if the representative does not have or represent an interest adverse to the proposed intervenor and if the representative does not fail in the fulfillment of his duty.”

There is simply no collusion between the plaintiffs and defendants in this ease. The plaintiffs strongly assert the constitutionality of the Balanced Treatment Act while [822]*822the defendants argue that the Act is unconstitutional. Furthermore, the Orleans Parish School Board, which is named as a defendant in this suit, has also filed a suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana seeking to have the Act declared unconstitutional.

A careful comparison of the answers filed by the Department of Education, J. Kelly Nix and the BESE Board and the proposed answer which applicants seek to file if they are permitted to intervene in this action reveals that the named defendants have raised the same defenses as those proposed by applicants. In fact, the language used in the various answers is almost identical. Moreover, the suit filed by the Orleans Parish School Board in the Eastern District of Louisiana attacks the constitutionality of the Act on the same grounds which applicants alleged in their proposed answer. The Court’s decision of March 8, 1982, has been supported by events which have occurred subsequent to the Court’s decision.

Subsequent to the Court’s order of March 8, 1982, the Orleans Parish School Board retained the same attorneys who filed the motion to intervene on behalf of the applicants.

The parties have also filed with the Court a “Preliminary Report” which sets forth the various contentions of the plaintiffs and defendants. This report sets forth the following major factual and legal contentions of the defendants:

“(b) In the defendants’ view, as worded by the attorneys for Orleans Parish, (1) the major federal issues are it is indisputable that: (i) “creation” and “creation science” as used in the Act necessarily encompass the concept of a supernatural Creator, an inherently religious belief; (ii) the. legislative purpose of the Act was religious; (iii) the primary effect of the Act is to advance religion; (iv) the Act will require the government to review educational materials for religious content; and (v) the Act will engender political divisiveness along religious lines.

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Related

McGehee v. Nix
581 F. Supp. 634 (M.D. Louisiana, 1984)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
93 F.R.D. 820, 1981 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17414, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/keith-v-louisiana-department-of-education-lamd-1981.