Under the Law: Gary B., Espinoza, and the fight for school funding

Abstract

A pair of recent federal court decisions could have profound consequences for school funding across the country. In the first, Gary B. v. Whitmer, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of seven Detroit, Michigan, public school students who argued that their schools were so woefully underfunded as to deny them the opportunity to become fully literate, which is essential to the exercise of fundamental rights under the U.S. Constitution. In the second, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Montana could not block parents from using the state’s education tax-credit program to pay for tuition at private religious schools.