Court Opinion

ID: 9580761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:08:40.090942+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:30.513957
License: Public Domain

McGRAW, Justice,
concurring:
I concur with the majority’s implicit recognition of the due process component of access to public education in this State in order to briefly elucidate its theoretical underpinnings.
*35West Virginia Constitution art. XII, § 1 provides that, “The legislature shall provide, by general law, for a thorough.and efficient system of free schools.” In Syllabus Point 3 of Pauley v. Kelly, 162 W.Va. 672, 255 S.E.2d 859 (1979), this Court recognized that, “The mandatory requirements of ‘thorough and efficient system of free schools’ found in Article XII, § 1 of the West Virginia Constitution, make education a fundamental, constitutional right in this State.”
West Virginia Constitution art. Ill, § 10 provides that, “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law....” Under the nearly identical language of the fourteenth amendment, the United States Supreme Court, in Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565, 574, 95 S.Ct. 729, 736, 42 L.Ed.2d 725, 734-35 (1975), recognized “a student’s legitimate entitlement to a public education as a property interest which is protected by the Due Process Clause and which may not be taken away for misconduct without adherence to the minimum procedures required by that Clause.”
Although the Court in Goss was concerned with exit from public school, by way of suspension, its rationale would apply with'equal, if not greater, force to entry into public school, in the instant case at the kindergarten level. Therefore, procedural safeguards commensurate with the fundamental constitutional interest involved must be incorporated into the rules and regulations mandated by the majority in order for refusal to admit a child into kindergarten to pass constitutional muster.