New Cases Filed in Iowa and Alabama Raise Innovative Adequacy and Equity Theories

Iowa is one of only six states in the country where a court has not issued a ruling involving a constitutional challenge to the adequacy or equity of the state’s educational system. That status may change if the plaintiffs in King v. State of Iowa proceed to judgment on the innovative adequacy claims that are set forth in the petition they filed in Polk County District Court in early April.

The gist of the plaintiff’s stated grievance is that Iowa has failed to provide equal access to an effective education because the state has failed to: establish and enforce standards, adopt effective educator pay systems, and establish and maintain an adequate education delivery system as guaranteed by the Equal Protection and Education Clauses of the Iowa Constitution and by the Iowa Code. This lack of standards --- Iowa is the only state in the country that lacks statewide academic standards --- and other alleged failings result in a situation where “the quality of a student’s education is dependent upon where they happen to grow up,” according to the petition.

Plaintiffs ask for no changes in the state’s education finance system in this case; rather, they ask the court to order the state to adopt educational standards and undertake other educational reforms. They also carefully distinguish between the role of the courts and the roles of the executive and legislative branches at the remedy stage, emphasizing that details concerning the standards and the other reforms are the responsibility of the legislature and the executive branch, and not of the court.

Funding Inequities As a Legacy of Segregation

A complaint recently filed in the federal district court for the Northern District of Alabama, Lynch v. State of Alabama raises a novel equity claim that is rooted in the state’s long history of slavery, segregation and racial discrimination. According to the complaint, substantial under funding of the state’s K-12 public school system, and particularly its rural and majority black schools, occurs today because the Constitution in force contains clauses that limit state and local governments’ ability to collect adequate amounts of revenue from local property taxes. Millage caps and artificially low tax assessments were put in effect in order to limit the ability of black citizens to raise sufficient revenues to operate effective public schools during the Jim Crow and Brown resistance eras. Property taxes account for only five per cent of Alabama’s revenue sources, most of which are collected from regressive sales and income taxes.

The plaintiffs are asking the federal court to enjoin continued application of the cited clauses and statutes and regulations based on them, pursuant to the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Prepared by Michael Rebell, May 8, 2008