PMTC Legal to Stop Accreditor Abuse
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You should care about the case I will describe below even if you don't care about my school.
I have less than 60 days to find a law firm and to file to take an appeal decision to the Supreme Court. After spending over a million dollars on this case, I cannot afford to fund the next steps without help. I have had great attorneys to this point and they are still fighting with me, however the need for a specialized Supreme Court attorney is real and urgent, however we are unsure of the actual legal costs. The $100,000 is an estimate. We are currently speaking with firms who can do this sort of case and will update with a more specific amount once we know who will take the case.
My name is Juliet Mee and I own Professional Massage Training Center in Springfield, Missouri, a small, high quality massage school with over 20 years of great outcomes. Our students are happy, find jobs and pay back their federal loans. We contribute mightily to our community. We will close in January 2016 unless we get help immediately.
Our accrediting agency hounded us for 2 years and ultimately revoked our accreditation. We filed a lawsuit against this action and we won. The judge who heard the trial sided with us firmly in his verdict, identifying that the accrediting agency staff were untruthful, biased, and destructive in their actions against our school. The agency's decision was arbitrary and capricious.
Little did I know that I had kicked the hornet's nest. No school had ever won a victory like this against an accrediting agency. The accrediting agency immediately filed to appeal the decision.
But they didn't just file an appeal. They got 23 other accrediting agencies to file with them. These agencies knew that the verdict in my case exposed bias and corruption in the industry, and our story was just the tip of the iceberg. The filing was an attempt to change the case from being about one accrediting agency taking a bad action against one school to being a case about the rights of accrediting agencies to do whatever they want without interference from the courts.
The appeals panel bought it. They overturned the original verdict and wrote a far-reaching decision that is devastating to not only my school, but to all accredited organizations in education as well as healthcare. If you only read their appeal decision, you would agree that our school should have lost its accreditation because they took the accreditor's view that our school was one of the bad players in the education industry. And this is absolutely not the case. The judges completely disregarded the malicious acts that were found to be factual in the first case. But it gets worse. In overturning the original verdict, they wrote their decision in a way that severely limits the ability of any organization to take their issues against an accrediting agency to court. Their opinion is that the people who work in accrediting agencies and serve on commissions are to be given great deference in their decisions, as they never make mistakes, and are always good and honest people whose expertise is beyond what any judge could ever hope to understand. In contrast, any organization or person who alleges that an accrediting agency made a bad decision or was unfair to them are immediately suspect if they cannot solve their problems through the procedures that the agencies provide to them.
This is not a decision that should stand and I will need financial and legal help to take it to the next level. I have provided all of the relevant legal documents at www.pmtc.edu I have done nothing wrong, have nothing to hide and am more than willing to talk to anyone who is interested.
I have less than 60 days to find a law firm and to file to take an appeal decision to the Supreme Court. After spending over a million dollars on this case, I cannot afford to fund the next steps without help. I have had great attorneys to this point and they are still fighting with me, however the need for a specialized Supreme Court attorney is real and urgent, however we are unsure of the actual legal costs. The $100,000 is an estimate. We are currently speaking with firms who can do this sort of case and will update with a more specific amount once we know who will take the case.
My name is Juliet Mee and I own Professional Massage Training Center in Springfield, Missouri, a small, high quality massage school with over 20 years of great outcomes. Our students are happy, find jobs and pay back their federal loans. We contribute mightily to our community. We will close in January 2016 unless we get help immediately.
Our accrediting agency hounded us for 2 years and ultimately revoked our accreditation. We filed a lawsuit against this action and we won. The judge who heard the trial sided with us firmly in his verdict, identifying that the accrediting agency staff were untruthful, biased, and destructive in their actions against our school. The agency's decision was arbitrary and capricious.
Little did I know that I had kicked the hornet's nest. No school had ever won a victory like this against an accrediting agency. The accrediting agency immediately filed to appeal the decision.
But they didn't just file an appeal. They got 23 other accrediting agencies to file with them. These agencies knew that the verdict in my case exposed bias and corruption in the industry, and our story was just the tip of the iceberg. The filing was an attempt to change the case from being about one accrediting agency taking a bad action against one school to being a case about the rights of accrediting agencies to do whatever they want without interference from the courts.
The appeals panel bought it. They overturned the original verdict and wrote a far-reaching decision that is devastating to not only my school, but to all accredited organizations in education as well as healthcare. If you only read their appeal decision, you would agree that our school should have lost its accreditation because they took the accreditor's view that our school was one of the bad players in the education industry. And this is absolutely not the case. The judges completely disregarded the malicious acts that were found to be factual in the first case. But it gets worse. In overturning the original verdict, they wrote their decision in a way that severely limits the ability of any organization to take their issues against an accrediting agency to court. Their opinion is that the people who work in accrediting agencies and serve on commissions are to be given great deference in their decisions, as they never make mistakes, and are always good and honest people whose expertise is beyond what any judge could ever hope to understand. In contrast, any organization or person who alleges that an accrediting agency made a bad decision or was unfair to them are immediately suspect if they cannot solve their problems through the procedures that the agencies provide to them.
This is not a decision that should stand and I will need financial and legal help to take it to the next level. I have provided all of the relevant legal documents at www.pmtc.edu I have done nothing wrong, have nothing to hide and am more than willing to talk to anyone who is interested.
Organizer
Juliet Mee
Organizer
Springfield, MO