Court Opinion

ID: 9694354
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:38:33.57687+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:59.936978
License: Public Domain

Loiseele, J.
(dissenting). Although education occupies a position of great importance in this state, and Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 493, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873, recognizes that today “education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments” the United States Supreme Court has concluded that social importance is not the criterion by which the funda*656mentality of a right for equal protection purposes is determined, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 32, 93 S. Ct. 1278, 36 L. Ed. 2d 16; see also Lindsey v. Normet, 405 U.S. 56, 74, 92 S. Ct. 862, 31 L. Ed. 2d 36.
Nor is the right rendered fundamental simply because it is mentioned in the Connecticut constitution. Robinson v. Cahill, 62 N.J. 473, 491, 303 A.2d 273; Olsen v. Oregon, 276 Ore. 9, 554 P.2d 139.
As I review the history of education in Connecticut, it does not support the “fundamentality” of the right. Education was not required to be free until 1869. Public Acts 1869, c. 71; compare with Rev. 1866, tit. 16, c. 3, § 98. In 1894, this court spoke of education as “a privilege or advantage, rather than a right in the strict technical sense of the term.1 This privilege is granted, and is to be enjoyed upon such terms and under such reasonable conditions and restrictions, as the law-making power, within constitutional limits, may see fit to impose; and, within those limits, the question what terms, conditions, and restrictions will best subserve the end sought in the establishment and maintenance of public schools, is a question solely for the legislature and not for the courts.” Bissell v. Davison, 65 Conn. 183, 191, 32 A. 348.
Over the years, the legislature has been troubled by the disparities in financial capability of the school districts, and has made compensatory grants to the poorer systems. See, e.g., Public Acts 1903, c. 102, *657p. 69; Public Acts 1917, c. 371, p. 2543. It can be expected that the legislature will continue to implement this concern in compensatory legislation, but such concern does not render education a fundamental right.
The history of the addition of the provision on education to our constitution in 1965 is, like most legislative history, ambiguous. Statements made at the constitutional convention could be interpreted either way depending upon which point of view is fostered. Taken as a whole, this history is indicative of what the majority opinion has stated, that the constitutional amendment regarding free education on the elementary and secondary level was merely a “codification” of the obligation assumed by the state in its statutory enactments. The constitutional provision would prevent the state from requiring students to pay for education or from denying free education to some while making it available to others, but I do not see that the provision renders education a “fundamental” right.
Furthermore, the amendment regarding education must be read not only with the equal protection clause of the constitution, but also with article tenth, which was, like the education provision, new in the 1965 constitution, and provides specifically that “[t]he general assembly shall by general law delegate such legislative authority as from time to time it deems appropriate to towns.” The legislative authority over education is total, and includes the authority to tax for the support of education. Article tenth specifically authorizes the legislature to do what it has done in regard to education: to delegate the responsibility of raising the large part of the funds for its support to the towns.
*658Nor does the system adopted by the legislature seem to me to be as irrational as “the number of telephone poles in the district.” Local control with local fiscal responsibility, even in a property-poor district, is a rational justification for the present statutory scheme. One commentator, noting the lack of interest in education in the days when the income from the sale of the western lands covered most governmental education expenditures, states: “History will show that advancement in education depends largely upon local interest and local initiative, and that both interest and initiative are stimulated by some system of local taxation, instead of by reliance upon an income from a school fund.” Ames, History of Education in Connecticut, in 5 Osborn, History of Connecticut, p. 189.
No one argues that the state’s financial system causes an absolute denial of educational opportunities to any child or that education received in elementary or secondary schools is not free, as mandated by the state constitution. After you have brushed the foam off the beer, the plaintiffs’ argument concerns only one item—money.
The trial court explicitly states, and the majority of this court implicitly holds, that the “appropriate legislation” (article eighth, § 1), by which our legislature is constitutionally required to implement the guarantee of free elementary and secondary education, must be legislation which makes available to all towns the same amount of money per school child. I do not agree. There is nothing in the constitution requiring such an equalized pot of money per town. As I see it, the constitution requires free education, and “appropriate legislation” is legislation which makes education free. I will con*659cede that when the constitution says free education it must he interpreted in a reasonable way. A town may not herd children in an open field to hear lectures by illiterates. But there is no contention that such situations exist, or that education in Connecticut is not meaningful or does not measure up to standards accepted by knowledgeable leaders in the field of education. No doubt the property-poor towns are careful managers of the education dollar, and are likely to give the value of each program much closer scrutiny than is a wealthy town. I am not persuaded that expenditures for educational opportunities above the reasonable minimum mandated by the legislature have any substantial effect on the education of students over the long pull. The Coleman Report (United States Office of Education, Equality of Educational Opportunity), p. 325, suggests that any such thesis is open to serious question. Although the trial court did not make an express finding, it recognized in its memorandum that there is a lessening marginal utility for each successive increment of educational input.
I have difficulty determining on what basis the majority opinion rests, especially when it cites dissenting opinions, which cannot be viewed as authority. The majority opinion states: “We find our thinking to be substantially in accord with the decisions of the New Jersey Supreme Court in Robinson v. Cahill, 62 N.J. 473, 303 A.2d 273, and the California Supreme Court in Serrano v. Priest, 18 Cal. 3d 728, 557 P.2d 929 (Serrano II).” I assume that this means the court is in accord with the rationales and not just the results reached by those decisions. The rationale of Serrano v. Priest, 5 Cal. 3d 584, 487 P.2d 1241 (Serrano I), which relied upon federal authority, is the same rationale *660expressly rejected by 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. Serrano v. Priest, 18 Cal. 3d 728, 557 P.2d 929 {Serrano II), in no way states a new rationale; it merely adheres to the result of Serrano I on the basis that the educational system violated the state’s constitutional provisions, which a footnote in Serrano I had stated (p. 596 n.ll) meant the same as the federal equal protection clause. It did so even though the state legislature had made a substantial and significant effort to equalize education during the time between the two decisions. In New Jersey, where the state constitution requires that there be a “thorough and efficient system” of education for all, the New Jersey Supreme Court found that the state system was not “visibly geared” to the constitutional mandate, and established no minimum standards, which is not true in Connecticut. And more importantly, in my view, the New Jersey court rejected the “fundamental right” analysis as neither useful nor required. Robinson v. Cahill, supra, 491.
Up until today, this court has always stated that the due process and equal protection guarantees of our state constitution have the same meaning as their counterparts in the federal constitution. Roundhouse Construction Corporation v. Telesco Masons Supplies Co., 168 Conn. 371, 374, 362 A.2d 778; Karp v. Zoning Board, 156 Conn. 287, 295, 240 A.2d 845. Rodriguez unequivocally has ruled that disparities in spending for education between property-rich and property-poor towns do not violate the federal constitution. I see no distinction between the two constitutions in this respect, other than the provision in the state constitution con*661cerning free education in elementary and secondary schools, and, as I have previously stated, I believe that that provision alone does not create a fundamental right so as to invoke close judicial scrutiny in the determination of whether there is a violation of the equal protection clause of the state constitution.
As I read the majority opinion, although it mentions the constitutional provision concerning education, the real ground for its conclusion that education is a “fundamental” right is its historic importance in this state. Other rights to state-provided services have historically been of equal or greater importance in Connecticut, notably the rights to police protection, fire protection and public health services. The state assumed the duty of police protection long before it assumed the duty of free education. Using the rationale of the majority, the rights to these services are as fundamental as the right to free education. If delegating the responsibility for raising funds for education to the towns is an unconstitutional method of carrying out the state’s educational function, then such delegation must be equally impermissible in respect to these other historically important functions.
We cannot lose sight of the fact that the issue is not that our children are not getting a sound education, measured by reasonable standards, which will enable them to exercise fully their rights as citizens of their country. The issue is whether, because our state laws allow some towns to furnish a broader spectrum of choice than other towns desire to furnish or feel financially able to furnish, that the system has to tumble down. Both the trial court and my colleagues state that the system need *662only be changed to allow equal opportunity to each child in the state. The realities of the matter, as I see it, are that after this decision no system can survive judicial scrutiny so long as there is any inequality.
Our system of school financing, by local taxation and state aid, is one which has steadily extended education and improved its quality. The system has continued to be affirmative and when scrutinizing it under judicial principles we should be sensitive to the efforts the legislature has made.
As the United States Supreme Court in Rodrigues has noted, “ ‘[t]he history of education since the industrial revolution shows a continual struggle between two forces: the desire by members of society to have educational opportunity for all children, and the desire of each family to provide the best education it can afford for its own children.’ ”2 Our system of school financing is responsive to these two forces. While assuring good basic education for all children, it allows and encourages local participation and control.
To paraphrase Rodrigues, although this state’s system of school financing results in unequal expenditures depending on the wealth of a town, the disparities are not so irrational as to be invidiously discriminatory. This state has persistently endeavored to narrow the differences in levels of expenditures without sacrificing the benefits of local participation. Our system of financing is not the product of purposeful discrimination. It is rooted *663in years of experience in this and other states and in major part is the product of responsible studies by qualified people. See San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, supra, 55.
Furthermore, it is troubling that the findings of the trial court, in ranking Connecticut towns on the basis of property-per-pupil, have made no mention of the core cities and the role they play in this drama. In Rodriguez, the United States Supreme Court pointed out (p. 58) that research projects have concluded that any financing alternative designed to achieve a greater equality of expenditures is likely to lead to higher taxation and lower educational expenditures in the urban centers, a result that would exacerbate rather than ameliorate existing conditions in those areas. These practical considerations cannot determine constitutional questions but they serve to highlight the wisdom of abstaining from judicial interference in matters better left to the legislature.
Even more than the decision made by the court, the implications of the decision alarm me. I do not see any possibility that any system which falls short of total state financing of education, whether through state assumption of the property tax or through other means, will satisfy the demands of equal protection after this decision. If education is indeed a fundamental right in Connecticut, and after this opinion is published it will be so, the strict scrutiny test must be applied to any legislative scheme for financing education. I do not believe that the so-called power equalization system, in which the state awards funds to towns on the basis of the educational tax effort they make, as measured by their net school mill rates, can survive strict
*664scrutiny, for that system makes the educational expenditures vary in accordance with the willingness of townspeople to tax themselves for education, a factor which has no relation to the needs of the children. An equalization system in which property-rich towns were required to contribute to a state fund distributed to property-poor towns was, in November, 1976, declared unconstitutional in Wisconsin, as in violation of a state constitutional provision that “the rule of taxation be uniform,” construed to require that taxes be spent at the level at which they were raised. Buse v. Smith, 74 Wis. 2d 550, 247 N.W.2d 141. Nor do I believe that merely redistributing the existing state contribution to education in a compensatory manner will suffice; the state contribution is so small in relation to total expenditures for education that the inequality between property-poor and property-rich towns will still be substantial. Indeed, the California Supreme Court in a case relied upon by the majority as authority for its decision, has already rejected a plan which narrowed,3 but did not close, the educational gap between property-poor and property-rich towns on the basis that such a narrow gap could not pass judicial scrutiny. Serrano v. Priest, 18 Cal. 3d 728, 557 P.2d 929 (Serrano II). Whatever system the state uses, and the opinion states that there are various means open to the legislature, short of total state financing, if the property-poor towns are not brought all the way up the scale to the level of the top property-rich towns, there will be a disparity that will not survive strict judicial scrutiny, that is, if the court does its job. I cannot see any middle ground. If education is brought up *665to the Darien standard (and I doubt if any system devised will downgrade edncation in a town whieh wants the nltimate in edncation and can afford it), the trial conrt has fonnd that the state wonld have to increase its spending for edncation to over one billion dollars per year.

 The comment is more relevant to the “fundamentality” of education than to its status as a “right.” Of course, even a privilege cannot be bestowed in a manner which violates our constitution. Conn. Const. Art. I § 1.

 J. Coleman, Foreword to Strayer & Haig, The Financing of Education in the State of New York, p. vii, quoted in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 49, 93 S. Ct. 1278, 36 L. Ed. 2d 16.

 The system left only 10 percent of the California school budget to be affected by district wealth. Serrano v. Priest, 18 Cal. 3d 728, 786, 557 P.2d 929 (Serrano II) (Clark, J., dissenting).