James Uthmeier
Florida’s attorney general is not turning the page in his legal dispute with two textbook publishers he alleged were overcharging the state’s school districts for instructional materials in violation of the Florida False Claims Act.
James Uthmeier’s office filed a notice with the First District Court of Appeal on June 22 indicating it will appeal a lower court ruling in May that dismissed the office’s complaint against McGraw Hill LLC and Savvas Learning Co. LLC with prejudice.
Jonathan Sjostrom, the Second Circuit judge in Leon County who authored the dismissal order, found Uthmeier’s complaint was at odds with the Florida statute at the center of the dispute. The 1939 law says publishers and those who manufacture instructional materials cannot charge the state prices that exceed the lowest price charged to other states or school districts elsewhere in the United States.
The Attorney General’s Office argued that the textbook publishers negotiated differing deals with individual Florida school districts, meaning that some were overcharged and that state law required every Florida district to be given the best price offered anywhere in the United States.
Sjostrom, however, rejected that interpretation of the Florida law.
“The court concludes that the best pricing requirement applies only to interstate sales of instructional materials, not to sales to Florida school districts,” he said in the May 15 opinion. “Put another way, the statutory provisions do not forbid disparate pricing to Florida school districts, so long as the transaction satisfies the requirement as to transactions with school districts outside Florida.”
In 2013, the state Legislature considered amending the statute to apply to school districts within the state but declined to do so. Thus, the legislative history tends to support the position of the textbook providers, the court said.
“We believe the state court’s ruling was correct, and we plan to continue to vigorously defend our position in connection with any appeal,” a spokesman for McGraw Hill told the Florida Record in an email.
The law firm that represented McGraw Hill, Patterson Belknap, said in a statement published after the Second Circuit Court’s opinion was issued that the entirety of the Attorney General’s Office’s complaint was dismissed with prejudice.
“The court’s decision provides clarity regarding the lawfulness of pricing practices not just in Florida but in numerous other states with most-favored nation statutes covering instructional materials,” the law firm said in its statement.
The attorney general’s case was filed in August of last year after a whistleblower who managed one of McGraw Hill’s and Savvas Learning’s competitors accused the two textbook publishers of violating Florida law, according to Patterson Belknap.
The attorney general’s complaint sought treble damages and civil penalties against the two publishers, but the circuit court rejected the request and found that each party should pay its own attorney fees and costs.
When the 1939 law was enacted, the state purchased educational materials directly, according to Sjostrom’s decision, but since then the process has changed to give individual school districts the authority and flexibility to buy their own instructional materials.
