The State's Position in Cruz-Guzman (Part III)

This is the third post in a series on the Cruz-Guzman litigation, triggered by Judge Robiner's decision denying the Cruz-Guzman Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary judgment, but certifying a legal question to the court of appeals for resolution, in the event that Plaintiffs appeal the order.  This third post describes in a nutshell the position of the State of Minnesota.   A single post cannot do justice to any of the parties' intricate positions.  But the constitutional right to an adequate education, established by the Skeen and Cruz-Guzman Supreme Court decisions is a matter of high public interest. And so today's post is a brief and necessarily incomplete of what the state defendants told the court in their legal brief. 

The Attorney General’s brief for the defendants begins by acknowledging that the constitution requires the legislature to establish a “general and uniform system of public schools."   And, the brief implicitly bows to the fact that the legislature meets this responsibility “to create such a system through an extensive statutory framework. See Minn. Stat. chs. 120-129C.” In thus beginning, the brief indirectly acknowledges the Supreme Court’s holdings in Skeen and Cruz-Guzman that the linchpin of the constitutional education clause is that the legislature must assure that all districts provide an adequate education that meets all state standards, standards that are found in Chapters 120 to 129C. 

The state's brief then points out that the plaintiffs are actually adding a new concept to the education clause not explicitly found in either Skeen or Cruz-Guzman decisions.  Skeen is an educational adequacy decision that says that the legislature has a fundamental constitutional responsibility to provide enough funding to districts so that they can provide each student with an adequate education that meets all state standards.   The State's brief implicitly refers to these state standards as providing the framework for educational adequacy.  But, as the brief points out, the legislature has purposely excluded from that framework a requirement for racial or socioeconomic balanced enrollment.  In fact, the plaintiffs are claiming in effect, that the existing framework is inadequate and unconstitutional because it should have included a racial balancing requirement.  The State's brief continues:

"Plaintiffs do not challenge this framework, but nonetheless claim the system established by the Legislature is constitutionally defective because some schools fail to enroll a particular student demographic profile, regardless of cause and regardless of educational impact."

Racial balance, the state defendants exclaim is not part of the educational framework.  The plaintiffs are proposing an order that:

"would graft a new requirement onto the Education Clause: that the Legislature guarantee that every school in the state has a particular mix of students based on race and income. Such a constitutional requirement has no basis in law. The State has a long-standing policy of encouraging integration in its schools. The State has voluntarily enacted an administrative Achievement and Integration Rule ("A&I Rule") that requires identified school districts to address demographic imbalances and funds those efforts as a matter of educational policy. The State, however, is not constitutionally required to guarantee a particular mix of students.

In opposition to the motion, the State asserts that the plaintiff’s attempt to win without further proof is defective for several reasons:

• No Proof of Impact or Intent: “As a matter of law, racial imbalance in some schools standing alone, without regard to impact or intent, does not establish a violation of the Education Clause. “ 
  
  
• No Manageable Standards:  “Plaintiffs' position also is not supported by the state Supreme Court opinion in this case; does not lend itself to manageable judicial standards; and would inappropriately and necessarily entangle the court in educational policy decisions.”  This is the point that we referred to in Part II of our series on Cruz-Guzman.  When a court orders defendants to do something, it needs a measurable standard, and the Plaintiffs’ proposed order does not provide that standard.   

• Not Connected to Educational Adequacy.  “The Motion further must be denied because, at a minimum, Plaintiffs must show that any racial or economic imbalance in Minneapolis and St. Paul schools caused students to receive an unconstitutionally inadequate education. Plaintiffs have presented no evidence on this fact.”    

This last point is really important, and we have mentioned in the prior posts.   Had plaintiffs alleged that Minneapolis and St. Paul – and metropolitan area charters as well -- are not providing an adequate education to tens of thousands of their students, the plaintiffs would have no problem proving that contention.   We’ll not repeat the evidence here, but it is a slam dunk case, that nobody wants to bring, for some reason, despite all the protestations in the metro area as to how much we all care about providing an adequate education.

The Supreme Court declared in 1993 that the constitution requires the state to fund and provide each student with an adequate education that meets all state standards.  And, if the plaintiffs had alleged and proved that racial imbalance is the cause of this inadequate education, they would have had an easy road to victory.   But this is not the case that the Cruz-Guzman have spent five years to prove: they want the court to find that racially imbalanced schools are per se a violation of the education clause, because obtaining a public school education in an fully integrated classroom is inherently required by the constitution, even if that integrated education is in a school providing an otherwise constitutionally inadequate education. 

This claim -- that racially balancing metro schools would result in an adequate education --runs against the grain of an inconvenient truth.   Students are regularly leaving public schools and charters that provide an inadequate education, often making the choice to attend another school that also provides an inadequate education.  But where is the public interest in forcing students to attend their neighborhood schools (or forcing them not to attend the school that they have chosen) if that power is being used to place student in schools that are not providing an adequate education that meets all state standards, as Skeen and Cruz-Guzman actually require.  

Indeed, the case for racial balance would be vastly improved, if Minneapolis and St. Paul traditional publics and charters were required to educate to high literacy standards all children who are able to read (about 95% of all children) and to teach all children who can learn math and science, to do so proficiently.     In the next post will take a look at how Judge Robiner responded to the Plaintiff's motion, and then we'll take a look at the position of charter intervenors in the case.