Opinion ID: 1239525
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: constitutional right to education

Text: Two kinds of expenditures are involved in this appeal. The first is, perhaps inadequately, described as subsistence. This description includes the foster home care, including board and room of G. H., as well as payments for physical therapy and some incidental expenses for her. These sums have been paid for years by the Williams County Welfare Board. Although that board appealed from the order of the district court, it continued to make payments for subsistence, and concedes that it will continue to make the payments if no one else makes them. The greatest disagreement arises over the second category of expenses, also described inadequately, the so-called tuition at the Crippled Children's School. This designation necessarily covers more than the ordinary kind of education, since education of handicapped children requires a different kind of physical plant to accommodate their physical handicaps, a different kind of teaching adapted to the mental handicaps which so often accompany the physical ones, and special kinds of teachers to assist in surmounting the problems arising from all the varieties of handicaps encountered. The first question to arise, incredibly enough, is whether G. H. is entitled to have her tuition paid by anyone. A great many handicapped children in this State have had no education at all, which might indicate that they are entitled to none. A further shadow on their claim to an education has been cast, according to some of the briefs before us, by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 1278, 36 L.Ed.2d 16 (1973), which held that education is not a right mandated by the United States Constitution. We will return to the Rodriguez case later, but at this point we will consider whether the right to an education is a constitutional right under the Constitution of this State. We held long ago that it is, and we now reiterate that holding. The historic policy of this state, in common with the general policy of every other state in the Union, is to maintain a free public school system for the benefit of all children within specified age limits. This policy existed prior to statehood and is crystallized in sections 147 and 148 of the State Constitution, which read as follows: `A high degree of intelligence, patriotism, integrity and morality on the part of every voter in a government by the people being necessary in order to insure the continuance of that government and the prosperity and happiness of the people, the legislative assembly shall make provision for the establishment and maintenance of a system of public schools which shall be open to all children of the state of North Dakota and free from sectarian control. This legislative requirement shall be irrevocable without consent of the United States and the people of North Dakota.' [Sec. 147, Constitution of N.D.] `The legislative assembly shall provide, at its first session after the adoption of this constitution, for a uniform system for free public schools throughout the state, beginning with the primary and extending through all grades up to and including the normal and collegiate course.' [Sec. 148, Constitution of N.D.] Anderson v. Breithbarth, 62 N.D. 709, 245 N.W. 483, 484 (1932). We are satisfied that all children in North Dakota have the right, under the State Constitution, to a public school education. Nothing in Rodriguez, supra, holds to the contrary. The State of New Jersey has held, since Rodriguez, that education is a right under the Constitution of that State. Robinson v. Cahill, 62 N.J. 473, 303 A.2d 273 (1973). Handicapped children are certainly entitled to no less than unhandicapped children under the explicit provisions of the Constitution. Whether those who have been unconstitutionally deprived of education in the past have a constitutionally based claim for compensatory educational effort, we leave for future determination. See In re H., 72 Misc.2d 59, 337 N.Y.S.2d 969 (Family Court, Queens County, 1972). For the present, we say only that failure to provide educational opportunity for handicapped children (except those, if any there are, who cannot benefit at all from it) is an unconstitutional violation of the foregoing constitutional provisions, as well as Section 11 of the North Dakota Constitution and Section 20 of the North Dakota Constitution, which provide that all laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation and that no class of citizens shall be granted privileges or immunities which upon the same terms shall not be granted to all citizens. We find nothing in Rodriguez, supra, to persuade us to a different view. On the contrary, education has long been the primary responsibility of the States, and it is only natural that their constitutions should provide for a right to an education; while the Federal Constitution, as Rodriguez points out, is silent on the subject of education. And even the Rodriguez opinion indicates that Federal constitutional questions would arise if there were a total deprivation of educational opportunities, as there would be here if none of the parties before us was paying for the education of G. H. As the Court said in Rodriguez: The argument here is not that the children in districts having relatively low assessable property values are receiving no public education; rather, it is that they are receiving a poorer quality education than that available to children in districts having more assessable wealth. 411 U.S., at p. 23, 93 S.Ct., at 1291. Texas asserts that the Minimum Foundation Program provides an `adequate' education for all children in the State. By providing 12 years of free public school education, and by assuring teachers, books, transportation and operating funds, the Texas Legislature has endeavored to `guarantee, for the welfare of the state as a whole, that all people shall have at least an adequate program of education. This is what is meant by A Minimum Foundation Program of Education. `The State repeatedly asserted in its briefs in this Court that it has fulfilled this desire and that it now assures `every child in every school district an adequate education.' No proof was offered at trial persuasively discrediting or refuting the State's assertion. 411 U. S., at p. 24, 93 S.Ct., at 1291. While the Supreme Court of the United States, using the traditional equal-protection analysis, held that the Texas system of educational financing, which relied largely upon property taxes, was constitutional, we are confident that the same Court would have held that G. H.'s terrible handicaps were just the sort of immutable characteristic determined solely by the accident of birth to which the inherently suspect classification would be applied, and that depriving her of a meaningful educational opportunity would be just the sort of denial of equal protection which has been held unconstitutional in cases involving discrimination based on race and illegitimacy and sex. See Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 93 S.Ct. 1764, 36 L.Ed.2d 583 (1973); New Jersey Welfare Rights Organization v. Cahill, 411 U.S. 619, 93 S.Ct. 1700, 36 L.Ed.2d 543 (1973). In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954), the Supreme Court said, In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms. When North Dakota undertakes to supply an education to all, and to require all to attend school, that right must be made available to all, including the handicapped, on equal terms. The plain language of our constitutional provisions requires this conclusion. Even if it did not, the Federal Constitution would. The leading case as to the rights of the handicapped is Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 334 F.Supp. 1257 (E.D.Pa.1971), affirmed and settlement approved by a three-judge court at 343 F. Supp. 279 (1972). It is cited approvingly in Harrison v. State of Michigan, 350 F. Supp. 846 (E.D.Mich.1972). Another similar case is Mills v. Board of Education of District of Columbia, 348 F.Supp. 866 (D. C.D.C.1972). Even if we were disposed to avoid or evade our duty to construe the State Constitution to require educational opportunity for the handicapped (and we are not so disposed), the Federal courts would surely construe the Federal Constitution to require the same result, and properly so. See Reid v. Board of Education of City of New York, 453 F.2d 238 (2d Cir. 1971), and Federal cases supra. We hold that G. H. is entitled to an equal educational opportunity under the Constitution of North Dakota, and that depriving her of that opportunity would be an unconstitutional denial of equal protection under the Federal and State Constitutions and of the Due Process and Privileges and Immunities Clauses of the North Dakota Constitution. In fairness to the parties here, we must add that there is little disagreement among them as to the right of G. H. to an education (although one of them appears to claim that the State's duty to provide aid to welfare clients means only the duty to provide subsistence, defined as shelter, food, clothing and medical attention and nothing else a view we do not share). What the parties argue about most is the identity of the agency which is to pay for the education of G. H.