Opinion ID: 501750
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Pre-Request Expenditures

Text: 25 Ritenour spent $47,000 to repair the roof of Buder school in the budget year prior to the one in which it filed the budget request. According to Ritenour, these repairs prevented deterioration of the building and ultimately reduced the cost of reopening Buder. 26 The district court held that these expenditures should not be reimbursable because a request for expenses already incurred circumvents established procedures and practices. We disagree with this ruling. 27 Neither the State nor the district court points to a specific rule prohibiting reimbursement for an expenditure made prior to a request. Nor, can we find a valid reason for such a rule. Ritenour reduced the cost of the repair and ultimately the State's liability by making the repair. Frugality and foresight should be encouraged. 28 The State, citing Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974), contends that reimbursement for past expenditures would constitute a form of retroactive compensation barred by the eleventh amendment. This argument is without merit. 29 The eleventh amendment bars a suit by private parties seeking to impose a liability which must be paid from public funds in the state treasury. Id. at 663, 94 S.Ct. at 1356. [A] wide range of prospective relief 'which serves to bring an end to a present violation of federal law is not barred by the Eleventh Amendment even though accompanied by a substantial ancillary effect on the state treasury.'  Denke v. South Dakota Dept. of Social Services, 829 F.2d 688, 689 (8th Cir.1987) (citing Papasan v. Allain, 478 U.S. 265, ----, 106 S.Ct. 2932, 2940, 92 L.Ed.2d 209 (1986)); see also Liddell VII, 731 F.2d at 1308 n. 13 (approving the district court's funding orders in this case). The relief in issue here is prospective. The St. Louis school desegregation case is in the remedial stage. The failure of the State to pay Ritenour for the roof repair in question is not a past wrong for which Ritenour is attempting to hold the State liable. Rather it is a question of what the State must do now to conform its actions to the remedial relief already required. Thus, there is no eleventh amendment bar to this payment for past roof repairs. 30