Court Opinion

ID: 9856494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:48:22.880621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:50.809945
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in all of the Court’s opinion except part 11(B) (The Environmental Groups Do Not Have Standing to Represent the Direct Beneficiaries of the School Endowment Lands Trust.). In my view, the Court incorrectly identifies school districts as the direct beneficiaries of the school lands trust. In my view, the students in the common schools are the beneficiaries.
In declaring that school districts are the direct beneficiaries of the school lands trust, the Court focuses on the portion of art. 9, § 8 of our constitution referring to “the maximum long term financial return to the institution to which granted.” (Emphasis added.) These words were added to our constitution in 1982. 1982 Idaho Sess.L., H.J.R. 18, 935, 936. This was more than ninety years after the Idaho Admissions Bill granted land to the state “for the support of common schools.” 26 Stat.L. 215, ch. 656, § 4 (1890). In American Nat. Bk. v. Joint Ind. S. Dist., 61 Idaho 405, 411,102 P.2d 826, 828 (1940), the Court pointed out that “the duty of maintaining the public schools is imposed by the Constitution as a primary and fundamental duty of state government; (Sec. 1, art. 9, Const.) and the organization and maintenance of the districts is purely a matter of administrative convenience in the execution of the constitutional mandate.” In my view, therefore, the school districts are not the beneficiaries of the school lands trust. The true beneficiaries are those who benefit from the state’s constitutional duty to maintain common schools — the students. The environmental groups have standing to bring this action on behalf of students, whose parents are members of the groups.