When Republican lawmakers asked the state Supreme Court to reconsider a landmark ruling in the Leandro case in 2023, it took the court’s new Republican majority only 30 days to grant the unusual request. It was the latest in a 30-year legal battle over the right to a “sound, basic education” for North Carolina’s 1.5 million public school students.
The justices held oral arguments on February 22, 2024. But 601 days later, they have yet to issue a decision.
Leandro v. North Carolina began in 1994, when five low-wealth counties sued the state over what they contended was inadequate funding. The case has been in and out of court ever since as the state grapples with how to ensure a fair education for students in both wealthier and poorer districts.
The latest round of legal wrangling is over whether a trial judge had the authority to order the General Assembly to pony up billions for a sweeping, statewide school improvement plan.
With the state Supreme Court scheduled to release a new batch of rulings this Friday, education advocates are wondering if they’ll see a Leandro decision anytime soon—or ever. Many see the inaction as an action in and of itself.
The wait has been “unusually long,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green told The Assembly in a statement. “It’s crucial to remember that Leandro isn’t just about money—it’s about ensuring every North Carolina student has access to the systems and support necessary for a sound, basic education, as guaranteed by our state constitution.”
There is no state law compelling the justices to rule within a specific timeframe. Although the average case is decided within six months, some rulings come a lot faster or slower.
Michael Crowell, an attorney well-versed in North Carolina’s judiciary who worked at the UNC School of Government for 23 years, said he could not recall any other case that has lingered this long without a ruling.
“The old adage is ‘justice delayed is justice denied,’” Crowell said. “That’s why the Code of Judicial Conduct says, ‘A judge should promptly dispose of the business of the court.’ Trial judges get reprimanded regularly for taking too long to decide a case or enter an order.”
Three Decades in Court
In recent years, Leandro has become a symbol of the politicization of the courts and judiciary that some say has swung more toward making the General Assembly the most powerful branch of government rather than a co-equal.
In November 2022, when Democrats still held a majority on the state Supreme Court, the justices ruled that it was within the court’s purview to order the legislature to spend $5.6 billion on an eight-year plan that lawmakers did not develop or sign off on in order to improve educational opportunities for all North Carolina students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
That same month, though, two seats were flipped to Republican justices, pushing the court to its current 5-2 Republican majority and opening the door for yet another review of that question.
By then, the Leandro case was already approaching its third decade.
Robb Leandro, whose position as the first listed plaintiff made his last name synonymous with the fight to fund public education, was an eighth grader in Hoke County back in 1994. He’s now a lawyer in Raleigh with Parker Poe, the same firm that has represented his district and four others in Cumberland, Halifax, Robeson, and Vance counties.
Here is a condensed version of what’s happened over the last three decades.
In 1997, the state Supreme Court found that all North Carolina students are entitled to the opportunity to receive the “sound basic education” that the state constitution guarantees. That ruling allowed the counties’ lawsuit against the state to proceed to trial.
Later that year, the case was assigned to Wake County Superior Court Judge Howard Manning, and in September 1999, he started the first and only trial in the long-running case. He divided the questions of law into two segments—one dealing with claims posed by the low-wealth school districts and the other focusing on wealthier districts that later joined the case.
In April 2002, Manning issued the final part of a 400-page ruling. He found that the state had fallen down on its “sound basic education” obligation and ordered that every school have a well-trained principal and a certified teacher in every classroom.
Appeals sent the case back to the state Supreme Court, which in 2004 reinforced its previous ruling that the state has a constitutional obligation to ensure access to a sound basic education and sufficient resources to make that happen.
That did not end the lawsuit, however. Manning’s ruling focused on Hoke County, so the justices ordered his court to gather more evidence from the other districts.
For years, Manning focused more on the classroom instruction of children in the low-wealth schools than on the need for more state funding to attract quality teachers and provide necessary resources. He traveled the state to visit the school districts and held hearings to gauge their progress through testing scores and other measures.
Manning—known for folksy, blunt admonishments from the bench and in his court orders—had planned to keep the case after his retirement at age 72 in 2015. But he had health issues, and almost a year later, the case was assigned to Judge W. David Lee.
In 2018, Lee ordered WestEd, a California education consulting company, to assess the situation and help develop a comprehensive remedy plan that would make sure the state was offering a fair education to all students.
WestEd’s report called for systems to develop and recruit teachers and principals. It recommended creating a program to adequately finance schools that would be predictable and equitable. Student performance would be regularly assessed, and there would be more invested in pre-K and early childhood education.
Undertaking all the recommendations would cost the state $6.8 billion over eight years, according to WestEd.
In June 2021, Lee approved a settlement between the state and all 100 counties putting an eight-year remedial plan in place and requiring the legislature to spend $5.6 billion to enact it. The General Assembly, which holds the state purse strings, was not a party to the suit at that time. Top Republican lawmakers sought to intervene after Lee’s order, objecting to the notion that the court can order them how to spend the state’s money. Since then, the courts have been weighing that question.
The Wait
Former state Supreme Court justice Bob Orr, who served on the bench from 1995 to 2004, called Leandro an outlier in many regards. It came before the justices twice while he was on the court. He wrote the majority ruling in 2004 affirming a trial court finding that the state had failed at-risk pre-kindergarten children, particularly those in Hoke County, by not providing them the resources to set them on a path to success in school.
Like many others interviewed for this story, Orr said he could only speculate on what was going on in the inner chambers of the court this go-around.
Typically, Orr said, justices gather immediately after oral arguments and signal to each other how they plan to rule. They then decide who will write the majority opinion, while those in the minority decide who will express their viewpoints in a dissent.
Drafts of those opinions could be circulated among the justices to get input that is taken into account in the final opinion. Orr recalled a time he wrote something that persuaded the then-chief justice to change his mind before the ruling was issued for the public.
“The old adage is ‘justice delayed is justice denied.’ That’s why the Code of Judicial Conduct says, ‘A judge should promptly dispose of the business of the court.’”
Michael Crowell, attorney
Justice Anita Earls, one of only two Democrats on the current court, refrained from talking about the specifics of the Leandro case or the process of writing opinions in an interview with The Assembly this summer. She did, however, shed some light on another state where similar questions arose about why justices were taking so long to release rulings.
Nearly four decades ago, a Malibu attorney filed a lawsuit against California’s Supreme Court justices accusing them of failing to strictly comply with a provision of the state constitution that requires them to rule within 90 days after a case is submitted, or forgo their pay until they rule.
The justices had sidestepped the deadline by coming up with a variety of ways to define when a case was “submitted,” the Los Angeles Times reported. On average, it was taking the justices 200 days, or about six and half months, to issue rulings. Some cases lingered for a year or more. And in one case, the Malibu attorney had waited two and a half years. The case was settled, and in 1988, the justices unanimously adopted a rule that requires them to issue rulings no more than 90 days after oral arguments—with rare exceptions.
“There are no such constraints in North Carolina, so the majority—whoever constitutes the majority on the court—they get to decide,” Earls told The Assembly. “So justices who are in the minority don’t have any ability to impact how quickly or how long it takes for opinions to be issued. But the majority does.”
In November 2022, when Democrats still held a majority on the state Supreme Court, the justices ruled that it was within the court’s purview to order the legislature to spend $5.6 billion on an eight-year plan that lawmakers did not develop or sign off on in order to improve educational opportunities for all North Carolina students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
That same month, though, two seats were flipped to Republican justices, pushing the court to its current 5-2 Republican majority.
The Latest Round
Exchanges between the justices and attorneys during the 80-minute discretionary review hearing in February 2024 offered a glimpse of the thorny issues the court could be trying to resolve.
Matthew Tilley, the Charlotte lawyer representing state lawmakers, set the stage.
“At the outset, I think it’s important to stress what this case is and is not about,” Tilley said. “This is not a contest between those who want to fund education and those who don’t. It’s also not a case about whether or not our constitution guarantees every child in the state an opportunity to obtain a sound basic education. That right was granted in Leandro.”
Instead, Tilley said: “[T]he case is about whether the trial court, when presented with only district-specific claims, had jurisdiction to issue a sweeping statewide order, or statewide orders, that required the comprehensive remedial plan—a plan which dictates virtually every aspect of education policy and funding, not just for the districts that were plaintiffs, but for all 115 school districts across the state, effectively removing those decisions from the political and democratic process.”
“At the outset, I think it’s important to stress what this case is and is not about. This is not a contest between those who want to fund education and those who don’t.”
Matthew Tilley, lawyer representing state lawmakers
Republican Justices Trey Allen and Richard Dietz, both elected to the bench in 2022, asked about the absence of current students in the case.
“This case needs to get to the outcome, which is to cure a very serious violation of the constitutional rights of students in our state,” Deitz told Melanie Dubis, a lawyer with Parker Poe who has been lead counsel for the school districts. “But one thing that’s awkward is that your client is the government. And it’s not just the government but it’s the very government that’s violating the children’s constitutional rights.”
He questioned whether a ruling from the bench to support the comprehensive remedial plan could preclude current or future students from bringing action if the funding does not bring all students up to standards required under the state constitution.
What if the justices affirmed the trial court order, he asked, and districts received money from the comprehensive plan–but students and parents still thought they were not getting “a sound basic education in their school”?
“I just want to know, will those parents be told by a trial judge, ‘Sorry, your rights have already been decided,’ or can there continue to be many, many more Leandro suits any time a group of students thinks something needs to change in the schools to get a sound, basic education?”
In her arguments, Dubis had terse words for the lawmakers trying to fight the court-ordered release of state funds for the comprehensive remedial plan. She called their refusal to comply with Lee’s order as having moved from “obfuscation” to “recalcitrance,” and that they “seek to drag the court into their gamesmanship.”
Earls and Allison Riggs, her lone Democratic colleague on the bench, peppered Tilley with questions about how much authority he thought the court had to force the General Assembly to put more funding into education in order to meet their constitutional obligations.
“Assume that there is standing to challenge the state educational system and whether or not it is adequately funded. I don’t know that I’ve heard you say whether or not this court has any power to require a remedy,” Earls said to Tilley.
“I think it has the power to impose remedies subject to the limits of separation of powers,” Tilley said, but added a caveat. By law, Tilley said, “the court did not have the power to order money out of the treasury on appropriations.”
While the days wear on with no ruling, Lauren Fox, senior director of policy and research at the Public School Forum of North Carolina, a non-partisan education policy think tank, said school districts are struggling to come up with the capital funds to fix crumbling buildings, and teachers continue to struggle to make ends meet while also buying supplies with their own money.
More and more, Fox said, she’s hearing teachers say they could make more money working at Target or Chick-fil-A. Questions about funding for education this year at both the state and federal level make the wait for Leandro even more difficult.
“The uncertainty around what’s going to happen in Leandro is now compounded by a lot more uncertainty,” Fox said. “Things are worse. There are many districts having to cut teachers and classes.”
Anne Blythe, a former reporter for The News & Observer, has reported on courts, criminal justice, and an array of topics in North Carolina for more than three decades.