Citation

Hilbert J. J. Law Educ. 2017; 46(1).

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, University of South Carolina Law Center and the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law University of Louisville, Publisher University of South Carolina Law Center)

DOI

10.2139/ssrn.2832964

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

I. INTRODUCTION On November 5, 2015, seven families filed a class action lawsuit challenging theracial and socioeconomic segregation in their public schools. This potentially transformative case with national implications, Cruz-Guzman v. State of Minnesota, alleges that segregated schools deny schoolchildren their right to receive an adequate education under their state constitution.

While the complaint explicitly references Brown v. Board of Education, Cruz-Guzman represents a major departure from Brown and its progeny in the federal courts, a departure that reflects the many disappointments that have followed the Brown decision and left America's public schools more segregated today than in generations. It is remarkable enough that such a lawsuit was necessary more than sixty years after the historic ruling in Brown, which prohibited segregated schools. Equally noteworthy is that unlike Brown, this lawsuit was filed in state court relying on state constitutional law.

Cruz-Guzman represents the joining of two strands of legal approaches that have spent the last few decades headed in different directions. For more than forty years, state courts have played a major role and have had varied success in addressing issues of educational inequality under school finance and educational adequacy theories. Federal courts, on the other hand, have departed sharply from the initial promise8 of the Brown decision and have spent the last few decades undermining desegregation...

Language: en