The National Education Association suggested this week that school districts need not use their own money to pay for obligations under the No Child Left Behind Act, in the wake of a federal appeals court ruling that revived the union's lawsuit challenging the law as an unfunded federal mandate. The January 7, 2008 ruling means that "as a condition of participation in the No Child Left Behind Act, a school district or state cannot be compelled to use its own resources to carry out that mandate," Robert H. Chanin, the general counsel of the NEA and the architect of the lawsuit, argued in an interview. But other supporters of the lawsuit were more cautious, and the defendant in the case--U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings--suggested that the decision was far from the last word on the subject. The decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati--handed down one day before the law's sixth anniversary--was a victory for the 3.2 million-member NEA and its allies in the suit, which had been dismissed by a federal district court in 2005.