Court Opinion

ID: 9612509
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:09:25.054699+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:27.473924
License: Public Domain

SIMMS, Justice,
dissenting:
I must respectfully dissent. Plaintiffs have presented a substantial and persuasive attack on the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s public school financing system, however the Court has approved the constitutional sufficiency of the system although not a word of testimony or item of evidence had been presented to explain or defend it. There was no hearing. The trial court did not make any findings of fact or conclusions of law; the pleadings constitute the only record before us.
Plaintiffs argue that their petition raised material issues of fact that were controverted by defendants’ answers, and that the trial court’s judgment for defendants was erroneous. I agree.
The sole and decisive question for this Court’s consideration is whether the allegations of the pleadings together with all inferences that may be fairly deduced from them, when viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, state facts sufficient to support a legal claim. Bill v. Anderson, Okl., 363 P.2d 849 (1961).
In Tooley v. O’Connell, 77 Wis. 422, 253 N.W.2d 335, 341 (1977), plaintiffs sought a declaratory judgment that Wisconsin’s statutory plan for financing public schools from ad valorem tax revenues violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. The appellate court reversed the trial court’s dismissal of the complaint on grounds that it failed to state a cause of action, noting:
“The plaintiffs have set forth constitutionally protected rights that they allege have been infringed upon by the defendants. ... The plaintiffs have additionally alleged, with particularity, the respects in which the statutory scheme is constitutionally violative. Regardless of the merits of their constitutional claims, it *1152cannot be said that the plaintiffs have failed to raise a justiciable controversy.”
This is a complex area and the Court’s willingness to make factual determinations and draw legal conclusions from a silent record, will probably lengthen rather than shorten the time finally necessary to effect a remedy for obvious financial problems of the schools.
It is true, as the Court points out, that some other state courts have upheld their financing systems against attack on various state constitutional grounds. Not one of those decisions involved a situation such as this, where a school financial scheme attacked on constitutional grounds because of state wide financial disparities was upheld without a trial. In Board of Education of City of Cincinnati v. Walter, 58 Ohio St.2d 368, 390 N.E.2d 813 (1979), for example, the Ohio court detailed the extensive factual examination upon which the trial court and, in turn, the appellate court had based their decision. There the trial on the issues consisted of 78 days of testimony with 77 witnesses, the introduction of approximately 2400 exhibits and the record had 7530 pages of transcript. The trial judge adopted 400 findings of fact and 35 conclusions of law.
We are, I believe, the first state to reject an attack such as this on a financing scheme without allowing the plaintiffs a trial to attempt to prove their case.
I cannot agree with the Court’s treatment of the federal and state constitutional arguments, but primarily, I believe it improvident that we are passing on the questions now at all. In the absence of evidence, findings of fact and conclusions of law, it is merely gratuitous to decide that our financing scheme does not deny plaintiffs equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment, that the Rodriguez test does not apply to state constitutional analysis, that education is not a fundamental right under our state constitution and that our financing scheme therefore need not be examined with strict security.
It should be with great trepidation that we sweep the right to a public education away from the protection of heightened constitutional scrutiny, for no governmental function occupies such a unique position in our heritage.
The overwhelming importance and fundamental nature of the right to an education was pointedly recognized by this Court in Smartt v. Board of County Com’rs of Craig County, 67 Okl. 141, 169 P. 1101 (1917), where we stated:
“The very purpose of creating a state government by the people is to delegate thereto the performance of certain functions looking to the common safety and welfare, and the necessity for the performance of these functions through the agency of the state and its various subdivisions is the sole object for its creation. The people have provided in the Constitution for a full set of state officers, and have created separate departments and co-ordinate branches of the government and various municipal subdivisions, and confided to each the performance of certain duties which are made mandatory because necessary for the protection and well-being of the people composing the state. There has been much controversy among publicists and thinkers and much conflict in the decisions of the courts as to the proper and necessary limitations upon the powers delegated to the different departments and arms of the state government, but it is conceded by all that certain necessary fundamental functions must always be actively exercised in order to preserve the existence of the state and secure to the people the rights guaranteed to them, among which are the right to life, liberty, the possession of property, and the pursuit of happiness, and should the state become so impotent as to be unable to discharge these functions, there would result a failure of the purposes for which government was established.
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“In addition to the protection of life, liberty and property and the conservation of the public peace, health, and safety, there are certain other functions of government which are elementary and indestructible; such for example as the *1153administration of justice in the courts and the maintenance of a public school system for the education of all the children residing within the state; and to permit the performance of these mandatory duties to depend upon the making of provision therefor by certain subordinate municipal officers would render the life of the state and the security of the citizen precarious indeed.” At 1102, 1104. (E.A.)
I believe plaintiffs have pleaded a cause of action. Their allegations, which must be accepted as true, were controverted and raise material issues of fact. Plaintiffs set forth constitutionally protected rights which they allege were infringed upon by defendants acting pursuant to our financing laws. They also alleged, with particularity, the manner in which these laws violate their constitutional rights.
In my opinion, the trial court erred in sustaining defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings, and the majority errs in affirming it. I would reverse and remand this action and give plaintiffs an opportunity to prove their case.