Opinion ID: 442149
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Congressional Activities

Text: 9 On September 21, 1983, United States Representative Sydney Yates proposed the following legislation: 10 There is hereby appropriated $20,000,000 to be derived by transfer from funds available for obligation in fiscal year 1983 in the appropriation for Guaranteed Student Loans, to remain available for obligation until September 30, 1984, to enable the Secretary of Education to comply with the Consent Decree entered in United States District Court in the case of the United States of America against the Board of Education for the City of Chicago (80 C 5124) on September 24, 1980. 11 This provision (the Yates Bill) was incorporated by Congress into H.J. Res. 368, a continuing resolution to provide temporary funding for several federal departments in fiscal year 1984. The President signed H.J. Res. 368 into law on October 1, 1983. Three days later, on October 4, United States Senator Lowell Weicker proposed an amendment to the Yates Bill (the Weicker Amendment), which was adopted by Congress on October 31, 1983, in the following form: 12 No funds appropriated in any act to the Department of Education for fiscal years 1983 and 1984 shall be withheld from distribution to grantees because of the provision of the order entered by U.S. District Court for Northern District of Illinois on June 30, 1983: Provided, that the Court's decree entered on September 24, 1980 shall remain in full force and effect. 13 In response to a motion that the Board submitted after the enactment of the Yates Bill, the district court ruled, on October 5, that as soon as the Secretary of Education obligated to the Board the $20 million allocated by the Yates Bill, the government would be permitted to use $15.66 million in the Department of Education accounts that remained temporarily frozen. On the same day, the United States moved the district court to vacate its 1983 Order and to declare that the $20 million allocated to the Board under the Yates Bill brought the United States into compliance with the Decree. The government renewed this motion on November 10, arguing that in light of the Yates Bill and the Weicker Amendment, no funds beyond the appropriated $20 million were available to the Board for fiscal years 1983 and 1984. The district court denied the government's motion on November 21, 1983.