The New York Education Department (NYED) has issued a ruling which states that the Bureau of Proprietary School Supervision (BPSS) will not permit an enrollment agreement, including an arbitration clause, to infringe on the Commissioner of Education’s or the NYED’s jurisdiction “to investigate schools and issue findings (whether or not a complaint is filed), to commence disciplinary action, or otherwise to issue any remedy, including with respect to the tuition reimbursement account, provided by the Education Law and the Commissioner’s regulations.”  BPSS regulates private career training schools.

The ruling further states that mandatory, pre-dispute arbitration will not be approved, regardless of whether a school receives financial aid under Title IV of the Higher Education Act because BPSS has determined that the use of arbitration clauses “would unreasonably undermine a student’s private right of action under New York’s Education Law §5003(8), which permits a ‘student injured by a violation of [Article 101 of the Education Law to] bring an action against the owner or operator of a licensed private career school for actual damages or one hundred dollars, whichever is greater.’”  The ruling includes conditions under which “permissive, post-dispute arbitration may be approved.”

In addition to covering enrollment agreements, the ruling would appear to apply to school financing arrangements offered by a career training school subject to BPSS’s jurisdiction.  Moreover, given the ruling, it also seems likely that BPSS would try to preclude a school from asserting rights under a mandatory, pre-dispute arbitration provision in a private loan note or credit agreement that finances a student’s education at the school.

In our view, NY’s effort is an exercise in futility since it is unlikely to survive a preemption challenge under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), which makes arbitration agreements “valid, irrevocable, and enforceable.”  See AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 131 S. Ct. 1740, 1747, (2011) (“[w]hen state law prohibits outright the arbitration of a particular type of claim, the … conflicting rule is displaced by the FAA”).