The groups behind a wide-ranging lawsuit that argues Florida has violated its constitutional mandate to provide a high-quality education want to hit the reset button on the case.
In court papers filed Monday with the state Supreme Court, attorneys with Southern Legal Counsel argue a trial court erred when it dismissed their lawsuit on all counts. They also argued an appeals court erred when it ruled that declaring wide swaths of education funding and policy unconstitutional would encroach on the powers of other branches of government.
As a result, they argue, the high court should send the case back to the trial court for a new round of deliberations under different legal standards.
The plaintiffs in the adequacy lawsuit argue a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1998 created legal standards that allowed citizens to sue the state if they felt it was under-funding or otherwise mismanaging its public education system. Several former members of the Constitution Revision Commission that crafted that amendment have asked to weigh in with the court in support of that argument. The state has pushed back.
Throughout the nine years and counting of litigation, the state’s lawyers have maintained Florida’s public education system is improving in many respects, that the case deals largely with political questions beyond the reach of the courts, and that court-mandated improvements would be unworkable. They’ve also pointed out local school boards are partially responsible for the state of public education but are not included in the lawsuit.
The Leon County circuit court judge who presided over weeks of hearings on the case largely accepted that reasoning in a 2016 ruling hailed as a victory for education reform. An appellate court upheld the outcome last year.
But the plaintiffs now contend the lower courts were “wrong to categorically reject the possibility that judicially manageable standards may exist to assess the constitutional adequacy of Florida’s education system.”
The courts also dismissed a portion of the lawsuit that challenged the McKay Scholarship program, which provides vouchers to more than 30,000 children with special needs. And citing a separate lawsuit that reached a final resolution last year, courts also ruled the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to include the Florida tax credit scholarship program, which helps more than 100,000 low-income and working-class students pay private-school tuition, in their lawsuit.
The plaintiffs argue McKay Scholarships resemble a voucher the state Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional in 2006. Supporters of the program, including a group of parents represented by the Institute for Justice, argue the program more closely resembles private-school placements for children with special needs, which courts have long upheld.
Meanwhile, the plaintiffs in the adequacy lawsuit argue their case is different than the one that directly challenged the tax credit scholarship program. In that case, courts held the plaintiffs did not have standing, in part, because they could not show the school choice program harmed public-school funding. The state Supreme Court let that reasoning stand. The adequacy plaintiffs’ lawyers contend that they, unlike the groups that challenged the program directly, “allege many inadequacies, including state funding.”
The plaintiffs want the case returned to a trial court to deliberate the issues they raise, meaning if they win at this stage, the lawsuit would likely wind its way back through the courts.
This brings to mind a quote from Neil Chonin, an attorney advising the plaintiffs: “I hope that we’re going to be able to get to the bottom of what’s going on, and why it’s going on, and hopefully within my lifetime we’ll eventually have a ruling one way or the other.”
Step Up For Students, which publishes this blog, helps administer the tax credit scholarship program.
