Court Ruling Suspends RISE Definition of Professional Degree
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handed graduate and professional education a significant, if partial, win by suspending the Department of Education’s new regulatory definition of “professional degree” just days before it was set to take effect on July 1.
The suit consolidated two separate legal challenges brought by advanced-practice nursing, therapy, public health, education, and physician assistance associations (American Association of Nurse Practitioners v. McMahon and PA Education Association v. Department of Education). https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.292690/gov.uscourts.dcd.292690.45.0.pdf
What the court ruled
The court granted the plaintiffs a stay under Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of two components of the Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) final rule: part (i) of the definition (which includes the Department’s expanded criteria that programs must qualify under to be considered a “professional” program) and the “free-from-supervision” requirement that the Department created as part of its extra-statutory justification for excluding certain programs from the list of qualified programs.
Critically, this stay does not apply to either the list of eleven qualifying fields (e.g., Law, Medicine, etc.) or the statutory loan caps for graduate and professional programs. The court declined to suspend the list of eleven fields as it reasoned that it is non-exhaustive, and the statutory caps on loans were mandated by Congress and thus not something the court would consider. As a result – and pending appeal – the Department of Education will likely be forced to clarify in short order how it intends for colleges and universities to interpret the court’s decision on July 1 when the new loan caps and definitions go into effect.
Why the court ruled this way
In the discussion of the ruling, the court found that the Department had no authority to manufacture five new requirements onto a definition Congress had frozen in place as a means to narrow the scope of which graduate programs qualify to be “professional” under the new conditions. It also rejected the Department's interpretation in part because the Department's own added criteria (doctoral-level, six years, etc.) are not met by some degrees on Congress's own example list, such as the M.Div. and the LL.B.
The court also noted the Department's repeated refusal to weigh workforce-shortage consequences, a posture the opinion found difficult to square with the agency simultaneously reaching beyond the statute to narrow eligibility.
In the Court’s words: “[T]he Department restricted its analysis, due to lack of congressional instructions, when considering real-world factors militating in favor of broadening the definition; its decision to nevertheless go beyond congressional instructions to restrict the definition of ‘professional degree’ is as puzzling as it is legally erroneous.”
The Court's logic and arguments mirror many of those made in NAICU’s public comments on the RISE regulations.
Who this applies to
Because the relief is a universal APA stay, it reaches all institutions and students, not only the plaintiffs. With part (i) suspended, the operative test reverts to the statutory definition, which is the pre-existing § 668.2 three-part test and its non-exhaustive list. The operative criteria are that:
The degree signifies “completion of the academic requirements for beginning practice in a given profession”;
The degree signifies “a level of professional skill beyond that normally required for a bachelor’s degree”; and
Licensure is “generally required.”
That decision reopens the door for degrees that satisfy the three-part test to claim professional status (and the higher loan caps), even if they fall outside the eleven enumerated fields.
For more information, please contact:
Justin Monk