NC Supreme Court rules on Leandro, again. Will Republicans respect the rule of law?

Nearly three decades after the Leandro case began, the North Carolina Supreme Court has ruled, again, that the state must comply with its constitutional obligation to provide students with a sound basic education.

In a strongly worded ruling, the court’s Democratic majority upheld a lower court’s order that state officials transfer funds for the Leandro comprehensive remedial plan, which includes items like teacher and principal pay raises and investments in early childhood programs.

The Supreme Court has made it crystal clear that the state’s duty to adequately fund public education is not merely a suggestion. It is an obligation, and one that North Carolina has eschewed for far too long.

“The State may not indefinitely violate the constitutional rights of North Carolina schoolchildren without consequence,” Justice Robin Hudson wrote in the majority opinion. “Our Constitution is the supreme law of the land; it is not optional.”

The ruling is, unquestionably, a win for North Carolina and the 1.5 million students who attend our state’s public schools. The Leandro lawsuit may have begun with five rural school districts, but it’s much bigger than that now. North Carolina’s teacher shortage has reached crisis level. Student achievement is lagging.

Unfortunately, Republicans see this ruling as some kind of loss. They continue to insist that “activist judges” are overstepping by telling them how to legislate — that lawmakers have the exclusive authority to decide how state money is spent. It’s the same tired argument they’ve been making for years, and the court appears to be fed up with it.

“If this Court is to fulfill its own constitutional obligations,” the court’s ruling states, “it can no longer patiently wait for the day, year, or decade when the State gets around to acting on its constitutional duty ‘to guard and maintain’ the constitutional rights of North Carolina schoolchildren.”

We agree. The court shouldn’t wait. Because one thing this ruling does not — and perhaps cannot — do is repair the damage already caused by decades of legislative and executive inaction.

An entire generation of students has been denied the quality education they were owed. It’s been 28 years since the Leandro case was filed. Twenty-five years have passed since the Supreme Court first established the constitutional right to a sound basic education, and 18 years ago the court affirmed that North Carolina was in violation of that right. That’s long enough for a child to grow up, to graduate high school, to attend college.

Robb Leandro, the high school student who was the lead plaintiff in the 1994 lawsuit, is in his 40s now. He has children of his own. The state may not be able to right its past wrongs, but it can prevent future injustices.

Still, questions persist. Will the legislature will comply with this ruling? Will lawmakers fund the remainder of the Leandro plan in years to come, or will they continue to shun checks and balances — and the constitution itself? Agree or disagree with the court’s ruling, legislators must obey, or this becomes an altogether different kind of constitutional crisis.

And what will happen after next week’s election, if Republicans take the majority on the Supreme Court? The court’s three Republican justices made clear that they do not agree with this decision. Justice Phil Berger Jr., in a dissenting opinion, said the court’s action is “contrary to our system of government, destructive of separation of powers, and the very definition of tyranny as understood by our Founding Fathers.”

Please. If anything is destructive and tyrannical, it’s the idea of a legislature that believes it should answer to nobody, not even the state’s highest court. If the court must defer to lawmakers who willingly and persistently violate the state constitution, then that document — and the rights it affords us — are meaningless.

This story was originally published November 4, 2022 at 4:24 PM.