Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday announced that he filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden's Department of Education (DOE) over higher education accreditation.
The complaint, filed in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, names Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and other DOE officials as defendants and seeks to end the influence that accrediting agencies exert on Florida's colleges and universities.
"We reject the idea that a totally unaccountable, appointed, unelected accrediting agency can trump what the state of Florida is doing," DeSantis said during a news conference, according to the Tampa Bay Times. "We're asking the court to find this arrangement to be unconstitutional."
In recent years, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the main accrediting body in 11 southern states, has questioned actions at Florida's top institutions. Losing accreditation could mean a loss of federal money that is used to fund scholarships for students and grants for faculty members.
"They try to stick their beak into different things with all this," DeSantis reportedly said of the association.
According to the Times, DeSantis' lawsuit follows a period of heightened tensions between Florida and the Southern Association. The organization accredited all 12 of Florida's public universities until last year.
The organization's questioning of the late addition of then-state Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran to the list of finalists to be president of Florida State University reportedly frustrated members of the Board of Governors, which oversees the university system.
The Times reports that the association opened an investigation into the University of Florida a short time later, to examine allegations of political interference after professors there were initially barred from testifying as expert witnesses in cases against the state.
DeSantis signed a measure last year that requires universities to find a new accreditor at the end of each evaluation cycle and that allows schools to sue an accreditor if they believe they were negatively affected.
That law was modified this year so that institutions do not have to change accreditors after making the initial switch. Florida schools must receive permission from the federal Department of Education before seeking a new accreditor, however.
A Board of Governors staff member told the Times that the University of Central Florida and Florida Polytechnic University are in the process of responding to questions from federal education officials after requesting to change accreditors.