Strict licensing laws keep qualified experts out of North Dakota classrooms
North Dakota’s teacher licensing regime for private schools is the target of a new federal lawsuit.
The suit, filed by the Institute for Justice (IJ) on behalf of Capstone Classical Academy in Fargo, is challenging the state’s “onerous and invasive” teacher licensing requirements for private schooling, which keep people with advanced degrees or decades of professional experience out of private school classrooms unless they first complete a state licensing program.
The complaint argues the state’s licensing rules are unconstitutional, infringing on rights the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized for more than a century: the liberty of private schools and their teachers to offer something different from the government model. The lawsuit also highlights regulatory inconsistency, arguing that
the licensing requirements deny private schools, their teachers, and families the equal protection of the law: While North Dakota saddles private schools with onerous and invasive licensing requirements, it lets parents educate their children at home using instructors with no license, no degree, and no state approval at all. The state cannot plausibly explain why the need for licensing turns on whether instruction is provided in the classroom or in the living room.
“The law here could not be clearer,” says Riley Grace Borden, a litigation fellow at IJ. “For a hundred years the Supreme Court has said the government cannot standardize the country’s schoolchildren, and that is precisely what North Dakota is trying to do. We are confident the courts will see this case for what it is.”
The legal action was prompted by the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction sending Capstone a letter in May 2025 warning that several of its teachers were either unlicensed or teaching outside their licensed areas and that failure to comply could result in the state revoking the school’s approval.
“Over the following year, at significant expense, Capstone navigated the paperwork, kept job postings open for positions already filled by excellent teachers, and reshaped its courses to fit state-approved categories — all to satisfy a system that prefers a licensed teacher to a qualified one,” writes IJ Vice President for Communications J. Justin Wilson.
Most states do not require private school teachers to hold a state license. North Dakota is one of the stricter outliers, as it not only requires teacher licensure for all private school teachers and for school approval but also limits private school teachers to teaching courses only in fields in which he or she is licensed or for which they have obtained an “endorsement” from the state.
The result “is absurd,” continues Wilson. “A professor with a Ph.D. in history cannot teach history to eighth graders, and a practicing scientist cannot teach science, unless they first complete a licensure program designed for newly minted teachers.”
Students need teachers who are competent. But assuming a state-approved license is the only way to prove competence is misguided. Most states manage to vet competence without funneling every teacher through the same pipeline. A third-party accreditation, a subject-matter exam, or 20 years of actually doing the job can prove that just as well as a state license. (Or even better.) And with North Dakota already short on teachers, doubling down on the strictest version of this system looks less like quality control and more like the state getting in its own way.