Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has joined a lawsuit against the state's education officials alleging that they violated the law when they implemented the federal Common Core standards.
According to the case initiated by legislators, the state's education agencies failed to publicly advertise the standards before putting them in place, denying parents and community members their right to review and comment on them.
"The Louisiana Department of Education and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education should have followed proper administrative procedure before attempting to implement these one size fits all federal standards, and we believe the court will come to that conclusion in upcoming hearings," said the Republican and possible 2016 presidential candidate
in a statement.
"There is growing dissatisfaction with Common Core and we will continue to support every effort to halt the federalization of curriculum in Louisiana schools. Education is best left to local control – which is why we will continue fighting to get Common Core out of Louisiana.”
The lawsuit, initially filed in August, requested a temporary block on the implementation of the standards but a state district judge rejected it,
Breitbart reported.
"We are very pleased to have the Governor join our efforts," state GOP Rep. Brett Geymann, one of the 17 legislators who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, told Breitbart.
"Parents were denied the democratic process on something so important as the education of their children," he added. "With the help of the administration, we are very confident the people will win because it is clear the Department of Education violated the law."
Earlier this year, Jindal was involved in a lawsuit against the Obama administration over the state's fast-growing
school voucher program.
Attorney General Holder initially
tried to halt the program out of concern that sending thousands of students to private schools would exacerbate segregation, but he abandoned the effort and instead demanded demographic information on each participating student.
At one point, Jindal accused President Barack Obama of trying to "red tape it to death."