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Steve Renau                                                                     Tonya Harris                    816.983.8783                                                                   202-393-2427

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Husch Blackwell Education Team and the Council of the Great City Schools
Win Award for “Best Brief” from the Education Law Association

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 -- A team of Husch Blackwell attorneys, the legal, legislative and research staff from the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) and local counsel from the Pacifica Law Group won the 2021 August Steinhilber Award for “Best Brief” from the Education Law Association (ELA).

The Husch Blackwell team wrote an amicus curiae brief  in support of a preliminary injunction in the case of Washington v. DeVos on behalf of Husch Blackwell client CGCS. The brief successfully argued that the United States Department of Education (USDOE) had attempted to unlawfully rewrite important emergency legislation to support its own spending priorities rather than those of Congress. It demonstrated that the USDOE has sought to divert hundreds of millions of dollars that Congress intended to support public schools grappling with the pandemic, including thousands of schools in Council member districts, to private schools, regardless of the financial need of private school students. Finally, it discussed the practical impact that such a diversion would have had on urban public schools and its students.  

The brief-writing team was comprised of John W. Borkowski, Aleksandra O. Rushing, Mary E. Deweese, Paige Duggins-Clay, and Shmuel B. Shulman, members of Husch Blackwell’s Education practice; Gregory Wong of the Pacifica Law Group; and the CGCS team, Julie Wright Halbert, legislative counsel, Michael Casserly, Jeff Simering, Manish Naik and Moses Palacios. The Council is a non-profit coalition of 75 of the nation’s largest urban public-school systems in the United States.

The criteria for ELA’s award included Quality of Writing (including logical structure of argument, paragraphs and sentences; conciseness and clarity; emphasis of key points; use of headings and quotations) and Quality of Analysis (including presentation of the theory of the case and its limits; presentation of the doctrinal context; focus on points relevant to the Court; use of precedent; inclusion of relevant authority; discussion of relevance to education generally).

The team will be recognized during ELA’s annual conference October 20-23, 2021.

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About Husch Blackwell

Husch Blackwell is an industry-focused law firm with 25 offices across the United States, including its virtual office, The Link. The firm represents clients around the world in major industries including energy and natural resources; financial services and capital markets; food and agribusiness; healthcare, life sciences and education; real estate, development, and construction; and technology, manufacturing, and transportation. For more information, visit huschblackwell.com.

About the Council of the Great City Schools

It is the special mission of America’s urban public schools to educate the nation’s most diverse student body to the highest academic standards and prepare them to contribute to our democracy and global community. The Council brings together 75 of the nation’s largest urban public-school systems in a coalition dedicated to the improvement of public education for our nation’s urban public schoolchildren. See http://www.cgcs.org