Leandro should have ended long ago

For all the confusion, finger-pointing, and rancor that accompanied the North Carolina Supreme Court’s final ruling in the Leandro school-finance case, the primary emotion it conjured in me was relief. This is likely the last time I’ll feel compelled to comment on the matter.

I have many acquaintances, and some cherished friends, who are very angry at the Supreme Court for bringing an official end to the litigation without delivering its intended outcome: a court order compelling the state to spend billions of dollars more on public schools, necessarily financed by tax increases.

I mean no disrespect to them, but such an outcome would have been outrageous. Begun in 1994 as a legal claim that school systems in low-wealth counties should receive additional state funds so they could offer programs and facilities comparable to higher-wealth counties, the Leandro case then morphed into a broader claim that all of North Carolina’s public schools were funded below a minimum level required by the state constitution.

An “equity” lawsuit, in other words, became an “adequacy” lawsuit. Why? Because unlike the prior states targeted by similar equity lawsuits, North Carolina already funded its schools primarily with state taxes, not local ones. Because urban school districts intervened to lodge their own fiscal claims. And because the organizations behind the Leandro litigation believe increases in education spending would be good public policy.

They have every right to believe that. But Article IX of the state constitution, the one requiring that the state legislature “shall provide by taxation and otherwise for a general and uniform system of free public schools” wherein “equal opportunities shall be provided for all students,” isn’t the whole of the document.

Other sections require that all legislative power be vested in the General Assembly, that the legislature enacts state budgets, that “no money shall be drawn from the state treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law,” and that “the people of this state shall not be taxed or made subject to the payment of any impost or duty without the consent of themselves or their representatives in the General Assembly, freely given.”

Nothing in the design or operation of North Carolina’s constitutional order could reasonably be construed to allow the judicial branch to decide how much money taxpayers must spend on education, or for a governor and court to collude to produce a “settlement” drawn up by a left-wing advocacy group and about which the legislative branch, possessing the power of the purse, has no say.

Moreover, the state constitution is full of explicit and implicit protections of rights other than that of the opportunity to receive a sound, basic education. It protects, for example, the rights of North Carolinians to enjoy “the fruits of their own labor.” It promises that “every person for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person, or reputation shall have remedy by due course of law; and right and justice shall be administered without favor, denial, or delay.” And it states that the “benefits of The University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education” should “as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the state free of expense.”

Would it be proper for taxpayers to file a lawsuit alleging that North Carolina’s tax code imposes too heavy a burden on their right to “the fruits of their own labor,” and then for some future governor to negotiate a “settlement” that required state lawmakers or county commissioners to lower their tax rates by a set amount? What about litigation to force the state treasurer or state controller to transfer funds to the Department of Public Safety, the Administrative Office of the Courts, or county sheriff‘s departments for specified programs to ensure swift justice? Should the Supreme Court decide what specific amount of UNC tuition is as “free of expense” as “practicable”?

These are weighty matters, but not justiciable ones. So is the amount annually appropriated to public schools.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.