The Runaway Wagon: How Past School Discrimination, Finance, and Adequacy Case Law Warrants a Political Question Approach to Education Reform Litigation

INTRODUCTION Courtroom battles surrounding school finance and adequacy claims are very much alive today, nearly forty years after their progenitor, Serrano v. Priest. (1) In spawning a potential new chapter in this history, a trial court in California struck down its state's battalion of teacher tenure and employment laws under a legal analysis based in the education quality that those laws provided. (2) This "landmark" case, Vergara, is generating conversation that its results could be duplicated throughout the nation. (3) In a format familiar to school finance litigation, the Vergara court found that the state's tenure statutes so detrimentally affected teaching that education quality was unconstitutionally harmed. (4) While this result may seem extreme, the history of state education litigation, with comparisons to federal segregation litigation, shows not only that these dramatic remedies are not surprising but also that an application of the political question doctrine proves effective in scaling back any policy-based court excesses. As will be argued here, then, Vergara displays the natural conclusion of courts accepting inherently political questions as admissible claims. Part I of this Note, after a brief introduction to the political question doctrine, outlines relevant school segregation case law and follows up with a history of school finance and adequacy litigation. Part II discusses the patterns and parallels formed by these two areas of law, with particular attention focused on the choices and consequences of judicial decisions under the rubric of the political question doctrine. Part III introduces a few recent additions to the history of school finance litigation, with particular focus on Vergara. Part IV discusses these recent cases in light of the analysis in Part II. Part IV particularly considers how recent school finance litigation resembles the character of federal discrimination cases before limiting principles were installed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Furthermore, Part IV discusses how cases like Vergara are the logical conclusion of not applying political question concerns to school finance claims. Ultimately, courts ought to make a universal reference to the political question doctrine as a controlling principle for decisions in school adequacy litigation. I. POLITICAL QUESTIONS: FROM SCHOOL DISCRIMINATION TO SCHOOL FINANCE The political question doctrine is a branch of nonjusticiability, which acts as a restriction on court authority to accept claims. This jurisdictional bar has developed as a response to concerns that courts were rendering judgments in the area of public policy. The federal political question doctrine seeks to remove issues from court supervision that by their nature are better left to the cognizance of another branch of government. (5) While it is true that state courts are under no obligation to accept federal instruction on justiciability, many state courts have adopted and applied the federal political question factors as enunciated in Baker v. Carr. (6) The political question doctrine prevents judges from using limited courtroom tools to fashion remedies that overturn or compel new legislation. Otherwise, judges may be utilizing testimony limited to selected experts in order to change policies originally crafted by the representative legislature. Additionally, the political question doctrine contemplates that there are certain issues where policy and law are so intermingled that the question simply becomes unfit for judicial resolution. When judges try to resolve these deep, policy-based issues in a courtroom, high emotion may generate "bad law." (7) Worse yet, as courts proceed to resolve cases that are actually policy questions, judicial power shakes off its definitive boundaries. By way of introduction, political question issues in education law emerged from attempts at education reform where advocates, frustrated with the legislative process, sought to use courts to enforce their policy goals. …