A version of this story first appeared in WFAE Education Reporter James Farrell's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get newsletters from WFAE straight to your inbox.
After 770 days of waiting for the North Carolina Supreme Court to rule on the latest chapter in the 32-year-old Leandro school funding case — an unusually long time, according to legal experts — the court finally issued an opinion.
In a 4-3 decision, the court threw out its 2022 ruling, effectively scrapping efforts to force the state to fund a multi-billion-dollar remedial plan meant to improve schools. That plan had been built on work from educational consultants WestEd, and included proposals to raise teacher pay and recruitment efforts, implement a funding system that gave more money to schools with greater need and provide more support to low-performing schools.
Republican Justice Richard Dietz dissented alongside the Democrats Anita Earls and Allison Riggs.
A quick refresher: The Leandro case started in 1994, when five low-wealth school districts sued the state, alleging inadequate funding. The case established that all students have a right to a “sound, basic education” — and that right remains intact, even after Thursday’s ruling. Figuring out if the state was denying this right — and how to fix that — took decades.
There’s a lot to digest in the 244-page ruling, but here’s the bottom line: The court’s Republican majority ultimately ruled that because the case was never filed as a statewide claim, it was incorrect for past courts to pursue a statewide remedy as broad as the Leandro plan. And it ruled the court had breached the separation of powers by ordering the state to do so — only the General Assembly can decide how the state spends its money, the majority argued.
In her dissent, Earls argues that it ignores the practical reality of the case, which has long been understood to be rooted in statewide systemic issues and has established that there were widespread statewide deficiencies. She argued that the General Assembly has had 30 years to address those deficiencies, and the court had the obligation to step in when that never happened.
So you might agree with the ruling if you believed this case was more about the separation of powers and procedural process like the conservative John Locke Foundation, which issued a statement calling the ruling a “victory for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the people of North Carolina.”
“The court correctly recognized that judges cannot write the state budget from the bench based on the opinions of an unelected judge and consultants from California,” the statement read. “Budgets must be written by elected representatives who are accountable to the people — not by litigants who lost at the ballot box and went fishing for a judicial bailout.”
But if you believe Leandro is about a state that has failed to provide a constitutionally sound education to students, then this ruling is a gut punch, because it allows those deficiencies to carry on without consequence. Since the case was dismissed with prejudice, this specific case can’t be brought to the courts again.
I reached out to Jane Wettach, a retired Duke law professor who’s filed briefs in the Leandro case’s long history. She called Thursday “the saddest day in the history of public education in North Carolina” and called the opinion “convoluted and hyper-technical.”
“Clothing its decision in legal jargon and irrelevant history, the Court allowed itself to avoid saying in plain words what it was doing: depriving the school children of North Carolina of their ability to enforce their constitutional right to the opportunity for a sound, basic education,” she wrote in an email. “The decision allows the General Assembly to continue its consistent and long-standing underfunding of public schools without check.”
You can read some of the biggest reactions to the case from my story on Thursday. But I wanted to dive a little deeper into my conversation with Robb Leandro.
Leandro was one of the original plaintiffs in a case that would go on to bear his family’s name, even long after he’d finished school. He was an eighth-grade student in Hoke County Schools at the time the case was filed. As an example of one of the many paradoxes that come with a case as long and convoluted as this one, he’s now fully grown and works as an attorney at the very law firm that represented the plaintiffs in the case (though he himself did not represent them).
On a phone call Thursday, Leandro called the decision “discouraging,” but said he hoped the “parents and children in this state are not discouraged.”
Leandro said he believed that while the litigation is over,the constitutional right to a sound, basic education still stands — meaning families who feel denied that right still have options. He pointed to Dietz’s dissent, which notes: “This is the end of Leandro as a lawsuit, but not Leandro as a promise to public school students.”
He said he believes the next iteration of this case could be that “in superior courts across the state, you will see kids bringing individual Leandro claims to get their rights enforced.”
“I think today's decision overturns what was probably the best hope for a larger response to this idea that North Carolina is failing to provide a basic education. That is what today does, but it doesn't end the debate," he said. "It didn't extinguish the right. And wherever there's a right, there has to be a remedy. And so, now we just have to move to the next phase.”
Leandro said his family wanted to get involved in the case because they believed they could see the funding discrepancies between their lower-wealth Hoke County Public Schools and other school districts that get more funding, like Chapel Hill, Wake County or Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
“It was just clear that our schools did not provide the same opportunity to those kids,” Leandro said. “And that was clear to me when I was 14, just as much as it’s clear to me today.”
In that regard, he says, the Supreme Court was right about one thing: The case was originally about his own Hoke County Schools and other low-wealth districts. He said the case would go on to lay bare the challenges experienced statewide — even in wealthier communities. But he says he’s continued to understand the case through that equity mindset.
“From my personal experience, it was about places like Hoke County, which are great places in North Carolina and shouldn’t be left behind,” Leandro said. “One thing I’ve always thought, and I feel it to my core, which is: How you’re educated in North Carolina should not be determined by where you’re born. And it is a silly, and frankly, for lack of a better word, dumb process and policy to not ensure that every kid in North Carolina gets a sound, basic education. And that’s especially true for kids in places like Hoke County that have just incredibly talented young people that are not given the same opportunities.”
Leandro told me he’s “humbled” by the role the case has played in establishing the right to a sound, basic education. While he was hoping for a broader remedy, he believes “the fight continues.”
“The one thing we should do together is to ensure that our kids get a great education. Not just a sound, basic education, but a great education.”
