The GOP will now control NC’s Supreme Court. Does that dash any hope of Leandro funding?
The fate of a court order increasing funding for public schools is uncertain now that Republicans gained control of the North Carolina Supreme Court on Election Day.
Last week’s 4-3 ruling in the long-running Leandro school funding case was split along partisan lines, with all four Democrats backing the order requiring state leaders to increase education funding. But Tuesday’s election of two Republicans created a 5-2 GOP majority consisting of judges who in their dissent called the money transfer “the definition of tyranny.”
“Prediction: Not a dime of taxpayer money is ultimately spent on this unprecedented and unconstitutional order before it is blocked and reversed by a newly seated NC Supreme Court next year,” Brent Woodcox, a legislative attorney for N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger, said in a tweet last week.
But supporters of the court ruling say the high court’s new GOP majority should allow the money transfer to be enforced.
“To go back and change a historic decision so quickly would really damage the legitimacy of the court,” Matt Ellinwood, director of the Education & Law Project at the left-leaning N.C. Justice Center, said in an interview Wednesday. “People would not know how to follow the laws of the state if it can so easily change based on the makeup of the court.”
Nearly 30 years of litigation
The Leandro school funding lawsuit was initially filed in 1994 by low-wealth school districts to get more state funding.
Over the years, the state Supreme Court has ruled that the state constitution guarantees every child “an opportunity to receive a sound basic education” and that the state was failing to meet that obligation.
Last November, the late Superior Court Judge David Lee ordered the state treasurer, controller and budget director to transfer $1.75 billion to fund the next two years of a plan developed by a consultant. The plan is meant to try to provide every student with high-quality teachers and principals.
A state Court of Appeals panel blocked the order from being enforced.
The Supreme Court’s Democratic majority upheld Lee’s ruling and ordered the new trial judge to determine how much to transfer. The court majority said it had to intervene “to guard and maintain the constitutional rights of North Carolina schoolchildren.”
But in the dissent, the GOP judges said the issue is about how the “education establishment” is using its money and not whether the General Assembly is providing enough funding. The judges accused the court majority of acting as “super-legislators.”
“This usurpation of legislative authority is blatantly unconstitutional and threatens the very foundation of our republican form of self-governance,” Judge Phil Berger Jr., the son of Senate leader Phil Berger, wrote in the dissent.
‘Already decided on’
Melanie Dubis, the lead attorney representing the school districts in the case, said the court ruling was a “vindication of the rights of schoolchildren across the state.” Dubis said there’s no procedural mechanism for a newly reconstituted court to revisit the same issues it has already decided on.
“If the court tries to revisit the 140-page opinion — this thoroughly researched opinion — after the election, it will lose any semblance of independence or integrity that it ever had,” Dubis said in an interview Wednesday.
The Public School Forum of North Carolina called the court decision “historic” and “foundational.”
“We look to the NC Supreme Court, regardless of election, to uphold the law and ensure that every child in NC has the Constitutional right to a sound basic education,” the Forum said in a statement Wednesday.
Appeal the order?
The next big legal step will come when it’s time to enforce the money transfer, paving the way for potential appeals by lawmakers or others involved in the lawsuit.
“The North Carolina Supreme Court’s recent decision to transfer all this money out of the treasury and attempt to appropriate it unilaterally is ridiculous and entirely unconstitutional,” House Speaker Tim Moore said in a statement Wednesday. “That’s not something that this General Assembly supports at all.
“We’re going to continue to look at where we are legally, and I am confident that it is something we will be revisiting soon.”
Bob Luebke, director of the conservative John Locke Foundation’s Center for Effective Education, said any appeal would be kicked back to a new court majority that at the very least will be sympathetic to the dissent issued last week.
But David Hinojosa, attorney for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg branch of the NAACP, said it would be “wholly unjustified” to delay enforcement. Hinojosa, whose clients are plaintiffs in the case, said the public relies heavily on the sanctity of the courts to respect precedent.
“The last thing that the public would want would be an activist court revisiting questions of law that have already been settled for no good reason other than they just disagree with the prior decision,” Hinojosa said in an interview Wednesday.
This story was originally published November 9, 2022 at 5:01 PM with the headline "The GOP will now control NC’s Supreme Court. Does that dash any hope of Leandro funding?."
