Court Opinion

ID: 9621273
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:55:40.650279+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:01.282572
License: Public Domain

HASELTON, J.,
concurring.
I do not join in the majority’s holding that plaintiffs were members of a “true class” for purpose of Article I, section 20, of the Oregon Constitution, see 163 Or App at 305-08, and express no view as to that matter.
The question of whether the 1995 school funding legislation does, in fact, distinguish on the basis of geography, as opposed to other considerations, is close and difficult.1 Here,, as in Withers I, see 133 Or App at 386, there is no need, practically or legally, to resolve that question. Whatever the statutory differentiations in funding, they are rational. See 163 Or App at 308-10.
*311The “true class” answer can, and should, await another day.2

 The state argues, for example:
‘Tilt is possible, as plaintiffs would have the court do, to describe the factors that cause some districts to get more or less funding under the present law as a function of geography. * * * THlowever, what distinguishes higher-funded districts from lower-funded ones is not where they sit on the ground, but how much the district historically taxed itself on a per-pupil basis for schools. The current funding ratios simply are not the product of geography.”
A hypothetical highlights the difficulty of the “true class” question: The legislature enacts a statute that provides that districts in which more than 70 percent of the students exceed certain performance standards will receive enhanced funding. Does such a funding mechanism distinguish on the basis of geography?

 Query further whether even explicit geographic differentiations in state funding should ever be deemed to embody “true classes.” Another hypothetical:
The legislature approves funding for an opera house in Corvallis. Citizens of Albany challenge that appropriation as violating Article I, section 20. There is no “rational” basis for that legislation — indeed, Albany is demonstrably superior. Corvallis just happened to have the votes, and Albany didn’t.
Does that legislation violate the constitution as “irrationally” differentiating in the distribution of government benefits on the basis of geography? Or is such legislation merely the inevitable — and ultimately “nonjusticiable” — product of the political process?