The Fifth District Appellate Court has affirmed St. Clair County Associate Judge Julie Katz’s order dismissing a funding dispute filed by 21 school districts alleging the state failed to provide the funds necessary to achieve the more rigorous and expensive learning standards required in Illinois.
Justice James “Randy” Moore delivered the Rule 23 decision on April 17 with Justice Thomas Welch concurring.
According to the ruling, Katz properly dismissed the complaint based on the doctrine of sovereign immunity and the Illinois Supreme Court’s prior holdings that “no such causes of action exist.”
Justice Milton Wharton concurred in part and dissented in part.
“I concur with the majority’s conclusion that the State of Illinois enjoys sovereign immunity and cannot be required to defend this lawsuit. I agree that the trial court’s order dismissing the State as a defendant should be affirmed.
“However, I respectfully disagree with the majority’s affirmation of the trial court’s premature dismissal and its conclusion that the Illinois Governor cannot be held accountable for violating both the Quality Education Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Illinois Constitution,” Wharton wrote.
The 21 plaintiff school districts are represented by Despres, Schwartz & Geoghegen Ltd. in Chicago and the Law Offices of Thomas E. Kennedy III LC in St. Louis. They originally filed their lawsuit in April 2017 in St. Clair County Circuit Court against former Gov. Bruce Rauner, the State of Illinois and the Illinois State Board of Education. They filed an amended complaint on May 21, 2018 against Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Governor of the State of Illinois, and the State of Illinois.
The school districts suing the state are located in St. Clair, Madison, Bond, Christian, Fayette, Jersey, Macoupin, Montgomery, and Peoria Counties.
The Madison and St. Clair County school districts suing the state include Wood River-Hartford School District Number 15, Bethalto Community Unit School District Number 8 and Cahokia Unit School District Number 187.
The school districts claim the defendants adopted more rigorous and expensive learning standards to be universally achieved by every school in the state but have failed to provide adequate funding for districts with a higher concentration of low-income students.
They claim the Illinois Learning Standards adopted by the Illinois State Board of Education in 1997 represent skills students must be able to demonstrate at the different grade levels. The learning standards have been revised over the years, including the adoption of Common Core State Standards for English, language arts and math.
Further, the school districts say state law bars them from going into debt in order to achieve the learning standards.
Simply put, they claim they must meet tougher requirements with less money and cannot go into debt while doing it.
In count I, the districts seek to enforce Article X, Section 1 of the Illinois Constitution by requiring the defendants to use an evidence-based methodology to calculate the resources necessary for the districts to accomplish the Illinois Learning Standards and to pay to the districts the additional funds required.
The school districts claim the General Assembly enacted the Evidence Based Funding Act in 2017, which allegedly allows for the calculation of specific additional funds needed to achieve the learning standards. They allege that at the then-current funding rate of $350 million per year, it is impossible for the state to meet its goal.
The school districts claim ISBE must spend a total of $15.7 billion annually – more than 44 times the allotted funds – in order to provide a “high quality” education.
In count II, the districts argue that the learning standards preclude any local control.
“There is no longer a rational basis for the State’s extreme disparities in funding public education,” the complaint states.
The complaint also states that the disparities in expenditures per student range as high as $10,000 to $15,000. The plaintiffs allege the governor has exceeded his authority, and the state has deprived them and their students of the right to equal protection of the laws.
The defendants filed a motion to dismiss the complaint on July 20, 2018, asserting that the claims are barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity and that the plaintiffs lack standing to assert the rights of their students.
The school districts filed a response Aug. 24, 2018 arguing that they were seeking a declaratory judgment that the defendants have deprived them of their rights to a high-quality education, an order that the defendants submit a plan for additional aid to fully fund the learning standards by June 30, 2027, and a ruling ordering the defendants to modify state examinations, “which currently penalize students in low wealth districts when they apply for admission to State institutions of higher education.”
Katz granted the defendants’ motion and dismissed the complaint with prejudice on Oct. 17, 2018. The plaintiffs appealed on Nov. 13, 2018.
The appellate court held that Katz properly dismissed the defendants. In regards to the State of Illinois, Moore wrote that while the plaintiffs presented arguments supporting an action against the governor in his official capacity, they make no arguments as to why the principles of sovereign immunity do not apply to the claims against the state.
“We find nothing in the law that would allow the plaintiffs to pursue claims against the state of Illinois itself in the circuit court,” Moore wrote.
In regards to the claims against the governor, the appellate court concluded that the Illinois Supreme Court previously ruled that the determination of whether the state was fulfilling its duty of providing a quality education was outside the judicial function.
“Recently, the Illinois Supreme Court reiterated the long-standing principle that our circuit and appellate courts are bound to apply supreme court precedent to the facts of the case before them, ‘regardless of the impact of any societal evolution that may have occurred’ since the decision was made,” Moore wrote.
Similarly, in regards to the plaintiffs’ allegations of funding disparities, Moore wrote that the supreme court established that “the state’s system of funding public education is rationally related to the legitimate state goal of promoting local control.”
The appellate court concluded that it is for the supreme court to determine whether previous holdings should be altered.
In Wharton’s dissent, he wrote that the appellate court has a duty to address education quality and funding issues presented in the case rather than “ignoring or postponing this critical issue of utmost urgency and importance” to Illinois residents with an “overly-broad application” of prior supreme court holdings.
“While our supreme court has stated that case precedents must be applied ‘regardless of the impact of any societal evolution that may have occurred,’ the issues in this case do not focus on ‘societal evolution’; instead, this case involves legislative evolution that has modified and established a de facto definition of the constitutionally-mandated ‘quality education,’” Wharton wrote.
He stated that in the 24 years since the supreme court issued rulings on these issues, the state has modified and expanded the requirements schools must employ when educating students.
“As a result, much of the control that local school boards once enjoyed has been shifted to the State. To the extent local control remains a viable consideration, I would find that the plaintiffs only plead for adequate educational funding resources to exercise some degree of ‘local control,’” he wrote.
Wharton noted that the combination of underfunding and State-mandated education requirements have detrimental effects on the students of the rural and urban schools districts involved in this case.
He highlighted the 2018-2019 school year at Cahokia Unit School District No. 187 as an example. In Cahokia, students living in a low-income situation make up 93 percent of the school population. Seven of its 10 schools are academically underperforming. Additionally, Illinois’ school funding formula considers attendance, and the district has a “chronic absenteeism rate” of 50 percent for the entire district and 60 percent for the high school.
“Based upon the State assessments, the students of Cahokia are not receiving the education required by the legislature and the ISBE administrative regulations,” he wrote. “The cycle of low academic achievement will perpetuate year after year if changes are not made.”
Wharton also agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that the disparity in funding between wealthy and poor school districts violates the equal protection rights of students in poor districts. He stated that the Funding Act represents a change in the state’s priorities.
“These changes indicate that our legislature has made a policy determination that reducing inequities in school funding is an important goal,” he wrote. “Considering these changes, I do not believe that the current funding system is rationally related to the State’s legitimate goals.”
Further, Wharton wrote that it would be unconstitutional to fail to acknowledge the “well-documented relationship between inadequate education and the incarceration of large numbers of predominately young persons.”
In fiscal year 2018, the Illinois Department of Corrections reports that only 15.7 percent of prison inmates graduated from high school.
“For these reasons, I believe it is imperative that there be some avenue available to under-resourced school districts like the plaintiffs to insist on funding that is adequate to serve their students and meet the goals of the Funding Act,” he wrote. “The trial court’s dismissal of this case was procedurally early in this case.”
He added that reversing Katz’s order dismissing the issue against the governor would provide the parties with the opportunity to develop the issues in the trial court in case the Illinois Supreme Court decides to revisit the issues.
St. Clair County Circuit Court case number 17-CH-301