NC Supreme Court agrees to take up another issue in the Leandro education lawsuit
The North Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to hear a petition from state lawmakers in a landmark education lawsuit.
The court had already decided to take the lawsuit back up back in March. The new decision, dated Oct. 20, adds another issue that the justices will consider. At stake is a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar education plan.
The lawsuit, Hoke County Board of Education, et. al., v. State of North Carolina, et. al., is over whether the state provides adequate resources for its public schools to succeed. In November, the state Supreme Court, which then had a Democratic majority, upheld an order for a multi-billion-dollar, multi-year plan to shore up school funding make non-monetary policy changes. The lawsuit was filed by families and school boards in low-wealth counties and is commonly known as “Leandro” for a former plaintiff.
State Senate and House of Representatives leaders, Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, and Rep. Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, have contested the court-ordered plan. They argue lawmakers are the only ones who can determine education funding. Since the November ruling, they’ve filed petitions to hear other issues in the case that the now-Republican state Supreme Court majority has agreed to hear. Other parties in the lawsuit have contended the petitions amount to a re-hearing of the case even though the state Supreme Court has already ruled on it.
On Oct. 20, a majority of the justices said they would hear arguments on whether a lower court had the authority to decide in April how short lawmakers were on funding the court-ordered education plan. The November 2022 order had asked a superior court judge to make that determination, but lawmakers had argued the judge had no jurisdiction to that because the state Supreme Court had decided in March to take the case back up.
Court dates have not been set.
In the ruling, Associate Justice Phil Berger Jr. — Berger’s son — argued the court had not determined every remaining question in the case because not every student or educator from across North Carolina had the opportunity to provide input on the court-ordered plan. They may not believe the plan works for them, he wrote.
In her dissent, Associate Justice Anita Earls wrote that the Supreme Court has already rejected lawmakers’ arguments that the trial court lack jurisdiction to order a remedy in the lawsuit.
The education plan was formed from recommendations by three consulting groups who conducted surveys and focus groups before making recommendations to plaintiffs and state defendants. Parties agreed to a version of the recommendations in 2021. The plan calls for more money for educating disadvantaged children and children with disabilities, raising employee pay, expanding school turnaround programs and expanding early childhood education and pre-kindergarten, among other things.
