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Ask the Expert: What Does the Constitution Say About Education? Nothing Explicitly, But That Doesn’t Mean it Can’t Help Provide Students with Equal Educational Access, Says Assistant Professor Jenn Ayscue

This is part of the monthly “Ask the Expert” series  in which NC State College of Education faculty answer some of the most commonly asked questions about education.

The United States Constitution doesn’t explicitly guarantee a right to public education, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t help ensure that all students are able to access an equal educational experience.

Jenn Ayscue, Ph.D. , an assistant professor in the Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Educational Leadership programs at the NC State College of Education, explained that even though education is not directly addressed in the Constitution, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment has been applied to educational issues.

It was this clause, she said, that provided the basis for the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that laid the foundation for dismantling racial segregation in schools through a Supreme Court ruling that declared separate educational facilities for black and white students were inherently unequal.

“Within about a decade after Brown v. Board of Education, schools across the nation, primarily in the southeast where they had de jure segregation, began to desegregate,” Ayscue said. “But, the peak of desegregation was in the late 1980s and since that time, we’ve seen quite a bit of resegregation across the nation, including in North Carolina.”

When thinking about equitable educational access for students in modern times, Ayscue — who co-authored a report marking the 65th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling — notes that the context has changed.

While Brown v. Board of Education primarily focused on black and white students, the modern school population is increasingly diverse and multi-racial. White children no longer comprise the majority of students in public schools and Latino students are the largest group of students of color.

Ayscue, who studies policies that shape students’ access to diverse and equitable learning opportunities, said that academic integration for these students can be beneficial both academically and socially.

Research shows that students who attend integrated schools have higher levels of academic achievement and improved critical thinking and communication skills. In addition, they demonstrate a reduction in prejudice and belief in stereotypes and an increase in friendships across racial groups.

The impact of attending an integrated school can also extend well beyond graduation, Ayscue said.

“Students who attended integrated schools are more likely to live and work in integrated environments later in their lives. They also have better economic outcomes, with higher status jobs and better paying jobs, and higher levels of civic engagement,” she said. “These students also have lower rates of incarceration and better health outcomes.”

On the other hand, Ayscue says research shows that segregated schools can be systematically linked to unequal educational opportunities and outcomes. Students who attend minority segregated schools tend to have less access to advanced curricular options and rigorous coursework.

In addition, minority segregated schools tend to experience higher rates of teacher turnover and student mobility.

“Therefore, it’s perhaps not surprising that students in these schools have lower levels of academic achievement, higher drop-out rates and lower graduation rates,” Ayscue said.

Ayscue said that many school districts across the nation have begun working on voluntary desegregation plans, and there are several methods used today to address the issue.

She noted that district leaders can use multi-factor student assignment policies that account for the racial composition of a neighborhood when assigning students to schools and magnet schools, which can set diversity goals. In growing school districts, leaders can also actively work to place new schools in areas that would enroll a racially diverse group of students, Ayscue said.

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The 14th Amendment Protects the Right to a Public Education

Over the years, the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution has had an enormous impact on protecting individual rights in public elementary and secondary education. This has occurred through the United States Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the incorporation of other rights (like freedom of speech) to the states through the 14th Amendment.

Equal Protection Clause

The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment provides that a state may not “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” It applies to public elementary and secondary schools, as they are considered to be state actors. In 1954, the Supreme Court interpreted the Equal Protection Clause’s requirements in  Brown v. Board of Education . In perhaps one of the most famous and important cases issued by the Court, it stated:

We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs…are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

That language, and the Court’s decision, had a dramatic impact on public education. Schools were required to end the discriminatory practice of segregating students based on race. While segregation was more prevalent in some states than in others, all public schools in all states that had segregated students needed to desegregate, or face claims that they were in violation of the 14th Amendment. What followed was roughly 50 years of desegregation efforts in public schools, and numerous court decisions regarding the constitutionality of those desegregation efforts.

Over time, the focus evolved from ending and remedying the vestiges of discriminatory practices to integration efforts that sought to promote the diversity of the student population in public schools. In some instances, these integration efforts were voluntary, meaning they were done by schools that had not segregated students in the past. These integration efforts continue to this day, and the predominant legal issues revolve around the extent to which race can be used as a factor in the assignment of students to certain schools in order to diversify the student body.

The language, and the logic, of the  Brown v. Board  decision also found its way into other types of Equal Protection claims. For example, in the mid-1970s, students with disabilities challenged their exclusion from public school on equal protection grounds. Two very influential lower court decisions,  PARC v Commonwealth of Pennsylvania , and  Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia , relied on  Brown v. Board  and determined that students with disabilities could not be excluded from public school because of their disabilities.

Those court decisions led to a federal statute that imposed similar requirements on all public schools that accepted certain federal funds. That law turned into the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which today applies to all public schools. The law requires public schools to provide all students with disabilities with a  Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) . It also prohibits schools from expelling or suspending students with disabilities for longer than 10 days, when the student’s actions are caused by their disability.

Due Process Clause

Due process is another area of the 14th Amendment that has had a dramatic impact on individual rights in public education. The Due Process Clause says that states may not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Supreme Court has interpreted this clause to have substantive and procedural protections. With substantive due process, the 14th Amendment protects a parent’s right to direct the educational upbringing of their child. Because of this right, the Supreme Court ruled that a state statute that prohibited the teaching of foreign language, and a state statute that required all students to attend public schools, as opposed to private schools, violated the 14th Amendment. See  Meyer v. Nebraska  and  Pierce v. Society of Sisters . The Court also ruled that a state statute that required Amish children to attend school past the eighth grade violated the substantive due process rights, and the religious freedom rights, of Amish parents to direct the educational and religious upbringing of their children. See  Wisconsin v. Yoder .

As a result of these substantive due process protections, all states currently have exceptions in their state compulsory attendance statutes that require students of certain ages to attend school. The exceptions allow for attendance at private schools, religious schools, and homeschool to meet the compulsory attendance requirements.

The procedural due process protections of the 14th Amendment have also played an important role in public education, particularly in the areas of student discipline and teacher employment. With student discipline, the Supreme Court has ruled that students have a “legitimate entitlement to a public education as a property right.” See  Goss v. Lopez . That right may not be taken away without first providing due process protections, which are generally notice of what the student is accused of doing, and the opportunity to be heard before the student is disciplined.

The required amount of notice and opportunity to be heard increases as the severity of the discipline increases. With minor disciplinary actions, an informal discussion with the principal may be sufficient to meet the requirements. For more severe discipline, such as expulsion, a more detailed hearing is generally required to give the student a chance to present evidence, and to cross-examine witnesses. As a result of these constitutional due process protections, all states have enacted statutes and regulations that provide due process protections for students during the discipline process.

A similar due process right applies to tenured teachers at public elementary and secondary schools. Once a teacher receives tenured status, they have a property interest in their continued employment, and must be provided with notice and a hearing before it may be taken away from them. See  Perry v. Sindermann .

Incorporation

The third area where the 14th Amendment has impacted public schools is in the application of other constitutional rights to the states through the 14th Amendment, via a concept known as  incorporation . Perhaps the biggest impact here has been the First Amendment’s right to free speech, although other protections like freedom of religion have also made their mark on public education.

In the area of free speech, the Supreme Court has said that students and teachers do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” See  Tinker v. Des Moines . While courts do give some deference to school administrators in making decisions about whether to prohibit certain student speech, the First Amendment requires schools to justify their decisions when they infringe on free speech rights. The level of justification required depends on the nature of the speech, and the nature of the restriction.

For example, in  Tinker v. Des Moines , students were protesting the Vietnam War by wearing armbands, and the school disciplined the students for doing so. The Supreme Court ruled that the discipline violated the First Amendment, because the school could not show that the speech could reasonably be expected to cause a substantial disruption with school activities or the rights of others. By contrast, in  Morse v. Frederick , the Supreme Court deferred to a school administrator’s judgment that a sign that said “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” promoted drug use, and upheld the discipline of the students that displayed the sign at a school event.

These are just a few examples of the many ways that the 14th Amendment impacts individual rights in public education. Many of these issues arise on a daily basis in public schools, and the 14th Amendment provides some constitutional protections of individual rights that schools must take into account when addressing them.

Scott F. Johnson

Scott F. Johnson is a Professor of Law at Purdue Global Law School (formerly Concord Law School), where he teaches Education Law and Special Education Law, among other topics. He has written a number of books and articles in the education law area. Professor Johnson’s law practice included education and special education cases, and he currently serves as a special education hearing officer for a state agency.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not represent the view of Purdue Global Law School.

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Is Education a Fundamental Right?

By Jill Lepore

Before sunrise on a morning just after Labor Day, 1977, Humberto and Jackeline Alvarez, Felix Hernandez, Rosario and Jose Robles, and Lidia and Jose Lopez huddled together in the basement of the United States Courthouse in Tyler, Texas , the Rose City, to decide just how much they were willing to risk for the sake of their children, for the sake of other people’s children, and for the sake, really, of everyone. Among them, the Alvarezes, Hernandez, the Robleses, and the Lopezes had sixteen children who, the week before, had been barred from entering Tyler’s public schools by order of James Plyler, Tyler’s school superintendent. On the first day of school, Rosario Robles had walked her five children to Bonner Elementary, where she was met by the principal, who asked her for the children’s birth certificates, and, when she couldn’t provide them, put her and the kids in his car and drove them home.

This hadn’t been the principal’s idea, or even Plyler’s. In 1975, when Texas passed a law allowing public schools to bar undocumented immigrants, Plyler ignored it. “I guess I was soft-hearted and concerned about the kids,” he said. Also, there weren’t many of them. About sixteen thousand children went to the schools in the East Texas city of Tyler, which considered itself the rose-growing capital of America and was named for John Tyler, the President of the United States who had pushed for the annexation of Texas in 1844, which led to a war with Mexico in 1846. Of those sixteen thousand students, fewer than sixty were the children of parents who had, without anyone’s permission, entered the United States from Mexico by crossing a border established in 1848, when the war ended with a treaty that turned the top half of Mexico into the bottom third of the United States. Jose Robles worked in a pipe factory. Humberto Alvarez worked in a meatpacking plant. They paid rent. They owned cars. They paid taxes. They grew roses.

Nevertheless, in July of 1977 Tyler’s school board, worried that Tyler would become a haven for immigrants driven away from other towns, insisted that undocumented children be kicked out of the city’s schools unless their parents paid a thousand dollars a year, per child, which few of them could afford, not even the Robleses, who owned their own home. Turned away from Bonner Elementary, the Robleses sent some of their kids to a local Catholic school—Jose did yard work in exchange for tuition—but they were put in touch with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which sent an attorney, Peter Roos, who filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Texas. It was presided over by a judge whose name was Justice. “There were two judges in Tyler,” Roos liked to say. “You got Justice, or no justice.”

Participating in a lawsuit as an undocumented immigrant is a very risky proposition. In a closed-door meeting, Roos asked that the parents be allowed to testify in chambers and so avoid revealing their identities, which could lead to deportation. They had come to the courthouse knowing that, at any moment, they could be arrested, and driven to Mexico, without so much as a goodbye. Judge William Wayne Justice refused to grant the protective order. “I am a United States magistrate and if I learn of a violation of the law, it’s my sworn duty to disclose it to the authorities,” he said. Roos went down to the basement, near the holding cells, to inform the families and give them a chance to think it over. They decided to go ahead with the suit, come what may. Justice did make efforts to protect them from publicity, and from harassment, decreeing that the proceeding would start before dawn, to keep the press and the public at bay, and that the plaintiffs’ names would be withheld.

Roos filed a motion requesting that the children be allowed to attend school, without paying tuition, while the case unfolded, which was expected to take years. “An educated populace is the basis of our democratic institutions,” his brief argued, citing Brown v. Board of Education. “A denial of educational opportunities is repugnant to our notions that an informed and educated citizenry is necessary to our society.” The case was docketed as Doe v. Plyler. “This is one that’s headed for the United States Supreme Court,” Justice told his clerk. Five years later, the appeal, Plyler v. Doe , went to Washington.

Some Supreme Court decisions are famous. Some are infamous. Brown v. Board, Roe v. Wade. But Plyler v. Doe? It’s not any kind of famous. Outside the legal academy, where it is generally deemed to be of limited significance, the case is little known. (Earlier this year, during testimony before Congress, Betsy DeVos , the Secretary of Education, appeared not to have heard of it.) The obscurity of the case might end soon, though, not least because the Court’s opinion in Plyler v. Doe addressed questions that are central to ongoing debates about both education and immigration and that get to the heart of what schoolchildren and undocumented migrants have in common: vulnerability.

Plyler is arguably a controlling case in Gary B. v. Snyder, a lawsuit filed against the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, by seven Detroit schoolchildren, for violating their constitutional right to an education. According to the complaint, “illiteracy is the norm” in the Detroit public schools; they are the most economically and racially segregated schools in the country and, in formal assessments of student proficiency, have been rated close to zero. In Brown, the Court had described an education as “a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” But the Detroit plaintiffs also cite Plyler, in which the majority deemed illiteracy to be “an enduring disability,” identified the absolute denial of education as a violation of the equal-protection clause, and ruled that no state can “deny a discrete group of innocent children the free public education that it offers to other children residing within its borders.” Dismissed by a district court in June, the case is now headed to the Sixth Circuit on appeal.

Plyler’s reach extends, too, to lawsuits filed this summer on behalf of immigrant children who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. In June, the Texas State Teachers Association called on the governor of the state to make provisions for the education of the detained children, before the beginning of the school year, but has so far received no reply. Thousands of children are being held in more than a hundred detention centers around the country, many run by for-profit contractors. Conditions vary, but, on the whole, instruction is limited and supplies are few. “The kids barely learn anything,” a former social worker reported from Arizona.

Court-watchers have tended to consider Plyler insignificant because the Court’s holding was narrow. But in “ The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind ” (Pantheon) Justin Driver, a law professor at the University of Chicago, argues that this view of Plyler is wrong. “Properly understood,” Driver writes, “it rests among the most egalitarian, momentous, and efficacious constitutional opinions that the Supreme Court has issued throughout its entire history.”

Driver is not alone in this view. In “ No Undocumented Child Left Behind ” (2012), the University of Houston law professor Michael A. Olivas called Plyler “the apex of the Court’s treatment of the undocumented.” In “ Immigration Outside the Law ” (2014), the U.C.L.A. law professor Hiroshi Motomura compared Plyler to Brown and described its influence as “fundamental, profound, and enduring.” Even people who think the case hasn’t been influential wish it had been. “Plyler v. Doe may be irrelevant in a strictly legal sense,” the legal journalist Linda Greenhouse wrote last year, “but there are strong reasons to resurrect its memory and ponder it today.” Because, for once, our tired, our poor, our huddled masses—the very littlest of them—breathed free.

Laura Alvarez, ten years old, rode in the family’s battered station wagon to the courthouse in Tyler, for a hearing held on September 9, 1977, at six in the morning. (During a related Texas case—later consolidated with Plyler—a nine-year-old girl spoke to the judge in chambers and told him that, since being barred from school, the only learning she was getting came from poring over the homework done by a younger sibling—an American citizen.) In Tyler, the assistant attorney general for the State of Texas showed up wearing bluejeans. She’d flown in late the night before, and had lost her luggage. After an attorney from the Carter Administration said that the Justice Department would not pursue the litigants while the trial proceeded, during which time the students would be able to attend school, Judge Justice issued the requested injunction.

Witnesses presented testimony about economies: educating these children cost the state money, particularly because they needed special English-language instruction, but not educating these children would be costly, too, in the long term, when they became legal residents but, uneducated, would be able to contribute very little to the tax base. The Judge had a policy preference: “The predictable effects of depriving an undocumented child of an education are clear and undisputed. Already disadvantaged as a result of poverty, lack of English-speaking ability, and undeniable racial prejudices, these children, without an education, will become permanently locked into the lowest socio-economic class.” But the question didn’t turn on anyone’s policy preferences; it turned on the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, guarantees certain rights to “citizens” and makes two promises to “persons”: it prohibits a state from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and prohibits a state from denying “any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Before Plyler, the Supreme Court had established that the due-process clause applied to undocumented immigrants, who are, plainly, “persons,” but it had not established that the equal-protection clause extended to them, and the State of Texas said that it didn’t, because undocumented immigrants were in the state illegally. Judge Justice disagreed. “People who have entered the United States, by whatever means, are ‘within its jurisdiction’ in that they are within the territory of the United States and subject to its laws,” he wrote.

But how to apply that clause? The courts bring a standard known as “strict scrutiny” to laws that abridge a “fundamental right,” like the right to life, liberty, and property, and to laws that discriminate against a particular class of people, a “suspect class,” like the freed slaves in whose interest the amendment was originally written—that is, any population burdened with disabilities “or subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment, or relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process.”

Is education a fundamental right? The Constitution, drafted in the summer of 1787, does not mention a right to education, but the Northwest Ordinance, passed by Congress that same summer, held that “religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” By 1868 the constitutions of twenty-eight of the thirty-two states in the Union had provided for free public education, open to all. Texas, in its 1869 constitution, provided for free public schooling for “all the inhabitants of this State,” a provision that was revised to exclude undocumented immigrants only in 1975.

Justice skirted the questions of whether education is a fundamental right and whether undocumented immigrants are a suspect class. Instead of applying the standard of “strict scrutiny” to the Texas law, he applied the lowest level of scrutiny to the law, which is known as the “rational basis test.” He decided that the Texas law failed this test. The State of Texas had argued that the law was rational because undocumented children are expensive to educate—they often require bilingual education, free meals, and even free clothing. But, Justice noted, so are other children, including native-born children, and children who have immigrated legally, and their families are not asked to bear the cost of their special education. As to why Texas had even passed such a law, he had two explanations, both cynical: “Children of illegal aliens had never been explicitly afforded any judicial protection, and little political uproar was likely to be raised in their behalf.”

In September, 1978, Justice ruled in favor of the children. Not long afterward, a small bouquet arrived at his house, sent by three Mexican workers. Then came the hate mail. A man from Lubbock wrote, on the back of a postcard, “Why in the hell don’t you illegally move to mexico?”

“The Schoolhouse Gate” is the first book-length history of Supreme Court cases involving the constitutional rights of schoolchildren, a set of cases that, though often written about, have never before been written about all together, as if they constituted a distinct body of law. In Driver’s view, “the public school has served as the single most significant site of constitutional interpretation within the nation’s history.” Millions of Americans spend most of their days in public schools—miniature states—where liberty, equality, rights, and privileges are matters of daily struggle. Schools are also, not incidentally, where Americans learn about liberty, equality, rights, and privileges. “The schoolroom is the first opportunity most citizens have to experience the power of government,” Justice John Paul Stevens once wrote.

The Supreme Court paid relatively little attention to public schools until after the Second World War, but, since then, it has ruled on a slew of cases. Do students have First Amendment rights? In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the Court said yes. Three students had sued when they were suspended for wearing black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. In a 7–2 opinion, the Court sided with the students, affirming that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” and that public schools, though not democracies, “may not be enclaves of totalitarianism,” either. Justice Hugo Black issued a heated dissent. “It may be that the Nation has outworn the old-fashioned slogan that ‘children are to be seen not heard,’ ” he wrote, but he hoped it was still true that we “send children to school on the premise that at their age they need to learn, not teach.” A still more strident version of Black’s position was taken by Justice Clarence Thomas, in Morse v. Frederick (2007), a case involving a student who, when a parade passed in front of the school, waved a banner that read “ BONG H i TS 4 JESUS .” Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts marked an exception to the free-speech rights established in Tinker: students are not free to endorse drug use, but Thomas, concurring, used the occasion to wax nostalgic: “In the earliest public schools, teachers taught, and students listened. Teachers commanded, and students obeyed.”

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Just because the courts have recognized students’ First Amendment rights, it doesn’t follow that students have other rights. Do students have Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures”? Do they have Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination? Do they have Eighth Amendment protections against “cruel and unusual punishment”? In Goss v. Lopez (1975), the Court ruled that students cannot be suspended or expelled without at least some form of due process, but, two years later, in Ingraham v. Wright , it said that schools could punish children, physically, and without any procedure at all. This shift took place amid a growing conservative reaction that viewed the Court’s schoolhouse opinions as an example of judicial overreach, as a violation of states’ rights, and as part of the rise of permissiveness and the decline of order. Lopez had extended to students a Fourteenth Amendment right to due process, partly on the back of the argument that granting students rights is a way of teaching them about citizenship, fairness, and decency. “To insist upon fair treatment before passing judgment against a student accused of wrongdoing is to demonstrate that society has high principles and the conviction to honor them,” the legal scholar William G. Buss wrote , in an influential law-review article in 1971.

Plenty of teachers and school administrators think that students don’t have any rights. “I am the Constitution,” Joe Clarke, the principal of a high school in Paterson, New Jersey, liked to say, roaming the hallways with a Willie Mays baseball bat in the nineteen-eighties. This was an era that Driver describes as marking a Reagan Justice Department campaign for “education law and order.” The era produced a 1985 decision, T.L.O. v. New Jersey , in which the Court ruled that schools require only reasonable suspicion, not probable cause, to search students and their backpacks and lockers and other belongings.

Together, the education law-and-order regime and the rise of school shootings, beginning with Columbine in 1999, have produced a new environment in the nation’s schools, more than half of which, as of 2007, are patrolled by police officers. It was a police officer’s closed-door questioning of a seventh grader, taken out of his social-studies class in Chapel Hill, that led to the Court’s 2011 decision, in J.D.B. v. North Carolina , establishing that only in certain circumstances do students have Fifth Amendment rights. Do students have Second Amendment rights? Not yet. But last year a Kentucky congressman introduced a Safe Students Act that would have repealed the 1990 Gun-Free School Zones Act, and allowed guns in schools. Meanwhile, more and more schools are surveilled by cameras, and bordered by metal detectors. If the schoolhouse is a mini-state, it has also become, in many places, a military state.

Few discussions of Plyler are more keenly sensitive to its ambiguities than Ana Raquel Minian’s “ Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration ” (Harvard), a revealing study that, because “undocumented lives” are nearly impossible to trace in the archives, relies on hundreds of oral histories. For Minian, Plyler, by its very casting of undocumented children as innocents, underscored the perception of undocumented adults as culpable—criminals to be arrested, detained, prosecuted, and deported.

As Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit, Woodrow Seals, a district judge in Houston, ruled for the children in a related case. Seals didn’t agree that the undocumented children were a suspect class, but he didn’t need to, because he believed the Texas statute was not rational, and, in any case, he thought that absolute denial of an education was so severe a harm that, on its own terms, it required strict scrutiny. Public school is “the most important institution in this country,” Seals wrote, and “the Constitution does not permit the states to deny access to education to a discrete group of children within its border.” Seals handed down his opinion in July, 1980, just months before the Presidential election. He wrote in a letter, “I hate to think what will happen to my decision if Governor Reagan wins the election and appoints four new justices to the Supreme Court.”

Carter’s Justice Department had supported the plaintiffs. Reagan’s did not. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Plyler v. Doe on December 1, 1981. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund considered the case to be as important as Brown v. Board of Education, which, in 1954, Thurgood Marshall, then the head of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, had argued before the Court. Marshall had presented Brown as a Fourteenth Amendment, equal-protection case. The plaintiffs in Plyler were making, essentially, the same argument. Conceivably, their case could realize the promise of Brown by establishing a constitutional right to an education. They could even press the claim that undocumented immigrants were not only persons under the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment but also, doctrinally, a suspect class. None of these objectives were politically within their reach, however, given the makeup of the bench.

During oral arguments, Marshall peppered John Hardy, representing Plyler, about what the State of Texas did and did not provide for undocumented immigrants:

M arshall : Could Texas deny them fire protection? H ardy : Deny them fire protection? M arshall : Yes, sir. F-i-r-e. H ardy : Okay. If their home is on fire, their home is going to be protected with the local fire services just— M arshall : Could Texas pass a law and say they cannot be protected? H ardy : —I don’t believe so. M arshall : Why not? If they could do this, why couldn’t they do that? H ardy : Because . . . I am going to take the position that it is an entitlement of the . . . Justice Marshall, let me think a second. You . . . that is . . . I don’t know. That’s a tough question. M arshall : Somebody’s house is more important than his child?

Later, Marshall came back at him, asking, “Could Texas pass a law denying admission to the schools of children of convicts?” Hardy said that they could, but that it wouldn’t be constitutional. Marshall’s reply: “We are dealing with children. I mean, here is a child that is the son of a murderer, but he can go to school, but the child that is the son of an unfortunate alien cannot?”

Three days later, the Justices held a conference. According to notes made by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Chief Justice Warren Burger said, “14A applies as they are persons but illegals are not entitled to E/P.” Marshall said, “Children are not illegals. . . . E/P means what it says.” Five Justices wanted to uphold the lower court’s opinion, four to reverse it. Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., volunteered to write the majority opinion. He circulated a draft that called for strict scrutiny, deeming the children “a discrete and historically demeaned group.” Powell said that he couldn’t sign it.

Powell, appointed by Nixon in 1971, had been, for a decade, the chair of the school board of Richmond, Virginia. Sometimes known as “the education justice,” he was deeply committed to public schools. But, because he was also committed to judicial restraint, he was opposed to declaring education to be a constitutional right. “It is not the province of this Court to create substantive constitutional rights in the name of guaranteeing equal protection of the laws,” he had written in 1973, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez , a case that was widely seen as having shut the door on the idea. For Powell, establishing education as a fundamental right invited claims: are health care, food, and shelter fundamental rights, too?

Powell was unwilling to sign Brennan’s first draft, not only because it went against his opinion in Rodriguez but also because the draft contained language “that will be read as indicating that all illegal aliens, adults as well as children, may be ‘discrete and insular minorities for which the Constitution offers a special solicitude.’ ” Brennan wrote a second draft; Powell once again asked him to narrow his opinion. But other Justices, who wanted to uphold the lower court’s decision, sought to move Brennan further to the left. After reading a draft of Burger’s dissent (“The Constitution does not provide a cure for every social ill,” the Chief Justice wrote, “nor does it vest judges with a mandate to try to remedy every social problem”), Justice Harry Blackmun circulated a proposal for issuing a different opinion, arguing that education has a special status because it’s foundational to all other political rights, being necessary “to preserve rights of expression and participation in the political process, and therefore to preserve individual rights generally.” Marshall, Brennan, and Stevens were prepared to join that opinion. But Blackmun needed Powell to make five. And Powell wouldn’t sign on. “As important as education has been in the life of my family for three generations,” he wrote to Blackmun, “I would hesitate before creating another heretofore unidentified right.”

In the end, Brennan crafted a compromise. Education is not a constitutional right, he wrote, “but neither is it merely some governmental ‘benefit.’ ” Undocumented migrants are not a suspect class, but their children are vulnerable, and laws that discriminate against them, while not subject to strict scrutiny, deserved “heightened scrutiny.” Powell wrote to Brennan after reading the draft, “Your final product is excellent and will be in every text and case book on Constitutional law.”

And yet its interpretation remains limited. “Powell wanted the case to be about the education of children, not the equal protection rights of immigrants, and so the decision was,” Linda Greenhouse remarked in a careful study of the Court’s deliberations, published a decade ago. For many legal scholars, Plyler looks like a dead end. It didn’t cut through any constitutional thickets; it opened no new road to equal rights for undocumented immigrants, and no new road to the right to an education. It simply meant that no state could pass a law barring undocumented children from public schools. But that is exactly why Driver thinks that Plyler was so significant: without it, states would have passed those laws, and millions of children would have been saddled with the disability of illiteracy.

In 1994, when Californians were contemplating Proposition 187, which would have denied services to undocumented immigrants, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times was able to track down thirteen of the original sixteen Plyler children. Ten had graduated from high school in Tyler. Two worked as teacher’s aides. Laura Alvarez and all six of her brothers and sisters stayed in Tyler after Judge Justice issued his opinion in Plyler. She became a legal resident of the United States under the terms of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, graduated in 1987 from John Tyler High School, and spent a decade working for the Tyler school district. “Without an education, I don’t know where I’d be right now,” she said.

“I’m glad we lost,” James Plyler said in an interview in 2007, when he was eighty-two, and long since retired, and enjoying his grandchildren, who are themselves of Mexican descent.

Lewis Powell retired from the Court in 1987. He was replaced by Anthony Kennedy. In another opinion, Powell had written that children should not be punished for the crimes of their parents. “Visiting this condemnation on the head of an infant is illogical and unjust,” because “legal burdens should bear some relationship to individual responsibility or wrongdoing.” It’s hard to know what Kennedy’s likely replacement, Brett Kavanaugh, would say about whether the Constitution guarantees undocumented migrant children the equal protection of the law. He’s never cited Plyler in his scholarship and, in opinions issued from the bench, has cited it only once. He hasn’t written much about equal protection, either, though he has said, in passing, that he finds the equal-protection clause ambiguous. As for undocumented migrant children, he has issued one important opinion, a dissent in Garza v. Hargan, last year, that, while not citing Plyler, described the plaintiff in the case, an undocumented immigrant minor in Texas, as particularly vulnerable.

“The minor is alone and without family or friends,” Kavanaugh wrote. “She is in a U.S. Government detention facility in a country that, for her, is foreign. She is 17 years old.” The reason for her vulnerability? “She is pregnant and has to make a major life decision.” She wanted to have an abortion; Kavanaugh had earlier joined a decision ruling that she must first leave detention and find a sponsoring foster family. When, in a further appeal, the D.C. court vacated that ruling, Kavanaugh dissented, arguing that the court had acted on “a constitutional principle as novel as it is wrong: a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. Government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.” Her name was kept out of the proceedings. She was another Doe. It is not clear whether she ever finished her education. ♦

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The Constitutional Right to an Education

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Part of the book series: AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice ((AMIN,volume 11))

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The right to an education in the United States is grounded on the form of government created by the Constitution. The proper argument for understanding why there is a right to an education is not to show that it is implied by, say, the right to petition the government, a right that does require enough education to read and write, but to see that it is a necessary condition for the structure of government we have. The proper argument is not piecemeal, that is, going from provision to provision to determine which, if any, requires an education, but transcendental, seeing how the very nature of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people depends upon the people being educated.

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Robison, W.L. (2022). The Constitutional Right to an Education. In: McGregor, J., Navin, M.C. (eds) Education, Inclusion, and Justice. AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04013-9_4

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Education clauses in state constitutions across the united states.

January 8, 2020

This article documents the variation in strength of education clauses in state constitutions across the United States. The U.S. Constitution is silent on the subject of education, but every state constitution includes language that mandates the establishment of a public education system. Some state constitutions include clauses that only stipulate that the state provide public education, while other states have taken more significant measures to ensure the provision of a high-quality public education system. Florida’s constitutional education clause is currently the strongest in the country – it recognizes education as a fundamental value, requires the state to provide high-quality education, and makes the provision of education a paramount duty of the state. Minnesota can learn from the experience of other states. Most states have amended the education clause of their state constitutions over time to reflect the changing preferences of their citizens. Between 1990 and 2018, there were 312 proposed amendments on ballots across the country, and 193 passed. These amendments spanned various issues. Policymakers and voters in each state adopted the changes they deemed necessary for their education system. Minnesota has not amended its constitutional education clause since it was first established in 1857.

Constitutional language matters. We use Florida and Louisiana as case studies to illustrate that constitutional amendments can be drivers of change. Institutional changes to the education system that citizens of Florida and Louisiana helped create ultimately led to improved outcomes for their children. Minnesota can do the same. The first step is to amend the 1857 language to better reflect the preferences and needs of citizens in 2020.

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11 landmark SCOTUS cases that changed American education (gallery)

By Jackson A. Thomas

September 5, 2019, 1:00 pm CDT

Image from Shutterstock.com.

With school finally back in full swing across the country, it’s a great time for a history lesson in American education.

Landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases such as Brown v. Board of Education , Tinker v. Des Moises and the more recent Forest Grove School District v. T.A. have forever changed education law and how students are treated in school based on their race, religion, disability and more.

Education is a hallmark of civic life in the United States. So it’s not surprising that it has been at the forefront of many important controversies, including at the Supreme Court level, over the last several decades.

Check out 11 Supreme Court cases about American education that affected education law, constitutional law and the overall public school experience.

11 Landmark Supreme Court Cases That Changed American Education

A Lesson in Education History

Education is a hallmark of civic life in the United States. So it’s not surprising that education has been at the forefront of many landmark controversies, including at the Supreme Court level, over the last several decades. Check out 11 U.S. Supreme Court cases about American education that affected education law, constitutional law and the overall public school experience.

Attribution: Gallery by Jackson A. Thomas; photo illustrations by Sara Wadford.

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What you need to know about the right to education

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that education is a fundamental human right for everyone and this right was further detailed in the Convention against Discrimination in Education. What exactly does that mean?

Why is education a fundamental human right?

The right to education is a human right and indispensable for the exercise of other human rights.

• Quality education aims to ensure the development of a fully-rounded human being.
• It is one of the most powerful tools in lifting socially excluded children and adults out of poverty and into society. UNESCO data shows that if all adults completed secondary education, globally the number of poor people could be reduced by more than half.
• It narrows the gender gap for girls and women. A UN study showed that each year of schooling reduces the probability of infant mortality by 5 to 10 per cent.
• For this human right to work there must be equality of opportunity, universal access, and enforceable and monitored quality standards.

What does the right to education entail?

• Primary education that is free, compulsory and universal
• Secondary education, including technical and vocational, that is generally available, accessible to all and progressively free
• Higher education, accessible to all on the basis of individual capacity and progressively free
• Fundamental education for individuals who have not completed education
• Professional training opportunities
• Equal quality of education through minimum standards
• Quality teaching and supplies for teachers
• Adequate fellowship system and material condition for teaching staff
• Freedom of choice

What is the current situation?

• About 258 million children and youth are out of school, according to UIS data for the school year ending in 2018. The total includes 59 million children of primary school age, 62 million of lower secondary school age and 138 million of upper secondary age.

155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education

• Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education
• 8.2% of primary school age children does not go to primary school  Only six in ten young people will be finishing secondary school in 2030 The youth literacy rate (15-24) is of 91.73%, meaning 102 million youth lack basic literacy skills.

  How is the right to education ensured?

The right to education is established by two means - normative international instruments and political commitments by governments. A solid international framework of conventions and treaties exist to protect the right to education and States that sign up to them agree to respect, protect and fulfil this right.

How does UNESCO work to ensure the right to education?

UNESCO develops, monitors and promotes education norms and standards to guarantee the right to education at country level and advance the aims of the Education 2030 Agenda. It works to ensure States' legal obligations are reflected in national legal frameworks and translated into concrete policies.

• Monitoring the implementation of the right to education at country level
• Supporting States to establish solid national frameworks creating the legal foundation and conditions for sustainable quality education for all
• Advocating on the right to education principles and legal obligations through research and studies on key issues
• Maintaining global online tools on the right to education
• Enhancing capacities, reporting mechanisms and awareness on key challenges
• Developing partnerships and networks around key issues

  How is the right to education monitored and enforced by UNESCO?

• UNESCO's Constitution requires Member States to regularly report on measures to implement standard-setting instruments at country level through regular consultations.
• Through collaboration with UN human rights bodies, UNESCO addresses recommendations to countries to improve the situation of the right to education at national level.
• Through the dedicated online Observatory , UNESCO takes stock of the implementation of the right to education in 195 States.
• Through its interactive Atlas , UNESCO monitors the implementation right to education of girls and women in countries
• Based on its monitoring work, UNESCO provides technical assistance and policy advice to Member States that seek to review, develop, improve and reform their legal and policy frameworks.

What happens if States do not fulfil obligations?

• International human rights instruments have established a solid normative framework for the right to education. This is not an empty declaration of intent as its provisions are legally binding. All countries in the world have ratified at least one treaty covering certain aspects of the right to education. This means that all States are held to account, through legal mechanisms.
• Enforcement of the right to education: At international level, human rights' mechanisms are competent to receive individual complaints and have settled right to education breaches this way.
• Justiciability of the right to education: Where their right to education has been violated, citizens must be able to have legal recourse before the law courts or administrative tribunals.

  What are the major challenges to ensure the right to education?

• Providing free and compulsory education to all
• 155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education.
• Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education.
• Eliminating inequalities and disparities in education

While only 4% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school in low-income countries, 36% of the richest do. In lower-middle-income countries, the gap is even wider: while only 14% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school, 72% of the richest do.

• Migration and displacement

According to a 2019 UNHCR report, of the 7.1 million refugee children of school age, 3.7 million - more than half - do not go to school. 

• Privatization and its impact on the right to education

States need to strike a balance between educational freedom and ensuring everyone receives a quality education.

• Financing of education

The Education 2030 Agenda requires States to allocate at least 4-6 per cent of GDP and/or at least 15-20 per cent of public expenditure to education.

• Quality imperatives and valuing the teaching profession

Two-thirds of the estimated 617 million children and adolescents who cannot read a simple sentence or manage a basic mathematics calculation are in the classroom.

• Say no to discrimination in education! - #RightToEducation campaign

Related items

• Right to education

More on this subject

HerAtlas: Monitoring the right to education for girls and women HerAtlas: Background, rationale and objectives 12 March 2024

HerAtlas: Monitoring the right to education for girls and women HerAtlas: Disclaimer and terms of use 12 March 2024

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This is how many amendments there are in the U.S. Constitution and why it's hard to amend

How long does it take to ratify a proposed amendment to the u.s. constitution the first and 27th amendments had very different paths..

• Paul G. Summers, a lawyer, is a former appellate and senior judge, district attorney general, and the attorney general of Tennessee.

Editor's note: This is a regular feature on issues related to the Constitution and civics education  written by Paul G. Summers,  retired judge and state attorney general.

We finished our study of Article IV of the U. S. Constitution. We shall now delve into Article V of the Constitution’s seven Articles. Article V deals with the amendment process.

Article V lists two ways to amend the Constitution. The first is through the Congress. With a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate, the Congress can propose an amendment.

The second way to propose an amendment is by two-thirds “…of the several States,” which “…call a Convention for proposing Amendments….” 

The first process is by far the more popular. All of the amendments to our Constitution have resulted from the congressional process rather than from an “Article V Convention.” 

Here's how the constitutional amendment process works

We have had 27 Amendments to the United States Constitution since it was first ratified in 1789.

The advantage of the congressional amendatory process is that the subject matter is limited to a specific right or topic, such as one of the first 10 Amendments.

A good example is the First Amendment - freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government.

Under the Convention process, a convention could conceivably open up the Constitution to a number of changes, including the entire document. But the amendment proposal part is only half of the process.

Once a resolution for amendments has been passed by both Houses of Congress, the resolution must then be ratified. Three-fourths of the states’ legislatures, or Conventions in three-fourths of the States, must ratify a proposed amendment.

When the states have ratified the proposed amendment, then it becomes part of the Constitution.

“…(O)ne or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by Congress…” to the states.

How long does it take to ratify a proposed amendment? That’s a hard question to answer. The Bill of Rights, or first 10 Amendments, took about two years. The last amendment, the 27th, concerns the timing and compensation of Senators and Representatives. Part of the original Bill of Rights, it was not ratified until 202 years, seven months later by a vote of Michigan in May 1992. So, 10 Amendments were ratified in two years, and one in 202 years. Patience is virtue.

Proposed amendment would keep Supreme Court at nine justices

A 28th Amendment?There is a strong movement in Congress to propose the 28th Amendment. Over 200 members of Congress have either endorsed or sponsored such a resolution. This would be the shortest amendment in our Constitution, 13 words: “The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine Justices.”

That is the language of the proposed “Keep Nine” Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. If proposed and ratified, it would set the number permanently at nine Justices.

The Constitution is silent on the size of the Supreme Court. Without an amendment, a President and Congress could change the number for political advantage. Currently it just takes a bill passed by Congress and signed by the president to change the number of Justices. Our court has had nine justices since 1869, or 155 years. As the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opined when asked about the number of nine justices on the Court:  “Nine seems to be a good number, and it’s been that way for a long time.” 

We shall see. But be patient.

Reading the Constitution is timewell spent.Article VI is our next topic.

Paul G. Summers, a lawyer, is a former appellate and senior judge, district attorney general, and the attorney general of Tennessee. Raised in Fayette County, Judge Summers resides in Nashville and Holladay.

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The Crisis in Teaching Constitutional Law

By Jesse Wegman

Mr. Wegman is a member of the editorial board.

If you attended law school at any time over the past half-century, your course in constitutional law likely followed a well-worn path.

First you learned the basics: the Supreme Court’s power to say what the Constitution means. Then you read and discussed cases that set precedents for different parts of the Constitution — the commerce clause, presidential powers, due process, equal protection and so on. Finally you studied how the court balances individual liberties against the government’s need to act in the public interest.

It was all based on an underlying premise that has long bound together everyone involved in the project of training the next generation of lawyers: The Supreme Court is a legitimate institution of governance, and the nine justices, whatever their political backgrounds, care about getting the law right. They are more interested in upholding fundamental democratic principles and, perhaps most important, preserving the court’s integrity than in imposing a partisan agenda.

The premise no longer holds today. Many in the legal world still believed in the old virtues even after Bush v. Gore , the 5-to-4 ruling that effectively decided the 2000 presidential election on what appeared to many Americans to be partisan grounds. But now, the court’s hard-right supermajority, installed in recent years through a combination of hypocrisy and sheer partisan muscle , has eviscerated any consensus.

Under the pretense of practicing so-called originalism, which claims to interpret the Constitution in line with how it was understood at the nation’s founding, these justices have moved quickly to upend decades of established precedent — from political spending to gun laws to voting rights to labor unions to abortion rights to affirmative action to the separation of church and state . Whatever rationale or methodology the justices apply in a given case, the result virtually always aligns with the policy priorities of the modern Republican Party.

And that has made it impossible for many professors to teach in the familiar way.

“Teaching constitutional law today is an enterprise in teaching students what law isn’t,” Leah Litman , a professor at the University of Michigan law school, told me.

Rebecca Brown , at the University of Southern California, has been teaching constitutional law for 35 years. “While I was working on my syllabus for this course, I literally burst into tears,” she told me. “I couldn’t figure out how any of this makes sense. Why do we respect it? Why do we do any of it? I’m feeling very depleted by having to teach it.”

At least she’s still trying. Larry Kramer , a widely respected legal scholar and historian who was my constitutional law professor at N.Y.U. 20 years ago, called it quits in 2008, on the heels of the Supreme Court’s divisive decision in District of Columbia v. Heller , which struck down decades of precedent to declare for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. Many observers felt that the majority opinion, by Justice Antonin Scalia, intentionally warped history to reach a preordained result.

Professor Kramer was the dean of Stanford Law School at the time, and after the Heller ruling, he told me recently, “I couldn’t stand up in front of the class and pretend the students should take the court seriously in terms of legal analysis.” First-year law students, he felt, “should be taught by someone who still believed in what the court did.”

A profoundly different kind of court

Constitutional law education is in a crisis, Justin Driver , a professor at Yale who has taught the subject for 15 years, told me.

“One of the primary challenges when one is teaching constitutional law is to impress upon the students that it is not simply politics by other means,” he said. “And the degree of difficulty of that proposition has never been higher.”

The court has always operated in a space between law and politics, said Michael Klarman , a Harvard professor and constitutional historian in his 37th year of teaching. But the justices’ votes used to be less predictable; they have never been so starkly divided along partisan lines as they are now.

“What’s changed is that today’s Republican-appointed justices are much more conservative than any justices in the last hundred years,” Professor Klarman said, “and they represent the views of a Republican Party that is much more extreme than anything we’ve been accustomed to in the last hundred years.”

Even more troubling than the court’s radical rulings, from a teacher’s perspective, is the rapid and often unprincipled manner in which the justices reach them.

“What feels different at this moment is the ambition and the velocity, how fast and aggressively it’s happening,” said Barry Friedman, a longtime N.Y.U. law professor and co-author of a book on judicial decision making .

Take one of the most glaring recent examples, the court’s June 2022 decision striking down a century-old New York law requiring gun owners to obtain a permit to carry a gun in public.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen was decided 6 to 3, with all the Republican-appointed justices joining the majority opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas. It was the court’s most transformative gun rights case since Heller, and like that earlier case, it featured the right-wing justices’ playing amateur historians, cherry-picking and distorting evidence from decades or centuries ago to justify their existing opinions — a practice real historians refer to derisively as law-office history .

But Bruen went even further than Heller, which at least recognized that the right to bear arms was not unlimited and that most existing gun laws were perfectly constitutional. In Bruen, Justice Thomas wrote that the Second Amendment confers an “unqualified” right and therefore that laws restricting guns are presumptively unconstitutional unless they can be shown to be “part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds” of that right. In other words, it doesn’t matter how much evidence a 21st-century legislature might marshal to justify its efforts to curb gun violence; all that matters is whether a similar law existed hundreds of years ago.

“It sounds almost crazy when you put it that way, doesn’t it?” said Lee Epstein , a professor at the University of Southern California and principal investigator for the Supreme Court Database , a long-running project to catalog and analyze every vote by every justice. “It’s made-up history. No sense of judicial humility. No sense of letting governments work out their problems.”

The Bruen decision invalidated dozens of state and federal laws , upended longstanding legal regimes and befuddled lower court judges who have tried to apply it in the absence of a staff of trained historians. It also left many law professors (not to mention historians) speechless.

“Flat-out bonkers,” said Sandy Levinson , a professor at the University of Texas law school and the author of multiple books on the Constitution. “I try to imagine, what if this were a seminar paper? Who knows what grade you’d give it? It’s so strange as an exercise in what we might call legal reasoning. But it’s not a seminar paper; it’s a majority opinion of the United States Supreme Court. So what am I supposed to do with that?”

Professor Brown said the court had been surprisingly consistent over the centuries in how it balanced liberties with restrictions. “Bruen radically upended that entire framework,” she said. “So how do you teach students the relationship of a free person to their government?”

Most professors I spoke to for this article are politically liberal, as are most constitutional law professors in the country, particularly at the most prominent law schools. Still, the concerns I heard weren’t restricted to left-leaning legal scholars. Michael McConnell , a conservative former federal appeals court judge who teaches at Stanford, was fine with the ultimate result in the New York gun case, but he rejected the legal reasoning the court used to get there. “Bruen is not right under its own principles,” he told me. “It purports to be applying originalist and historicist interpretation, and it gets it wrong.”

In short, Bruen makes sense only when considered as a partisan political ruling: The modern right has long supported the elimination of gun restrictions, and the court agreed to decide the case only after it secured its current right-wing supermajority.

Professor Friedman said, “When you combine overruling with no appreciable change or explanation other than that the membership of the court has changed, what you have is naked power.”

A new generation’s lower expectations

If the politicization of the Supreme Court is jarring to professors, it’s less so to the students starting law school now, most of whom hadn’t been born when Bush v. Gore was handed down. They were still in college or even high school when Senate Republicans held a Supreme Court seat hostage for more than a year to ensure it would be filled by a conservative justice rather than a moderate liberal.

In contrast, most of today’s top constitutional scholars came of age in the heyday of the Supreme Court’s popularity.

“The people who taught us were all Warren court people,” said Pam Karlan , a constitutional and voting-rights expert at Stanford law school, referring to Chief Justice Earl Warren, who through the 1950s and 1960s led a court of both Democratic and Republican appointees in expanding civil rights, equalizing political representation and liberalizing the criminal justice system. “They’d clerked on that court. They valorized it. There was this notion that judges were these heroes who would save us all. Our students do not have that view.”

In other words, the Roberts court — and the hardball politics that went into shaping and sustaining it — is the only court that law students in 2024 have ever known. They entered law school with the cynicism that it took someone like Larry Kramer decades to acquire.

Still, today’s students are tomorrow’s lawyers, and the task of educating them must go on, which leads to some awkward but necessary conversations that did not use to be part of the standard constitutional law curriculum.

Professor McConnell recalled a recent exchange in one of his classes. “I said something to the effect of, ‘It’s important to assume that the people you disagree with are speaking in good faith.’ And a student raises his hand, and he asks: ‘Why? Why should we assume that people on the other side are acting in good faith?’ This was not a crazy person; this was a perfectly sober-minded, rational student. And I think the question was sincere. And I think that’s kind of shocking. I do think that some of the underlying assumptions of how a civil society operates can no longer be assumed.”

Others I spoke to agreed with this assessment. “We’re witnessing a transformation in the New Deal consensus,” said Mark Graber , a leading constitutional scholar and Regents professor at the University of Maryland. “Our students are increasingly rejecting it, progressives and conservatives. They are less judicial supremacists. They are more willing to question courts.” He added: “We have to figure out what the new world is going to look like. I don’t know.”

What role the Supreme Court will play in that new world is yet to be determined. Laurence Tribe , the longtime Harvard law professor and perhaps the country’s pre-eminent constitutional scholar, is not optimistic. The current court is “off on a jag of its own,” he said. “Unless and until it changes, the court will be seen as an increasingly bizarre institution that hasn’t caught up with the nature of law itself.”

And yet the professors I spoke to were not ready to give up on the court, for themselves as much as for their students.

“You’re not just ministering to them, you’re also trying to restore your own faith,” Melissa Murray, who teaches constitutional law at N.Y.U., told me. “This is a place for institutionalists. Deep down, they want to believe. Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing this.”

Jesse Wegman is a member of the editorial board , where he has written about the Supreme Court and national legal affairs since 2013. He is the author of “Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College.”

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12 major constitutional provisions on education in india.

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Some of the major constitutional provisions on education in India are as follows:

There are some changes regarding the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution. During 1976 our constitution was amended in many of its fundamental provisions. Under the Constitution of India, the Central Government has been specifically vested with several educational responsibilities.

Below are given constitutional provisions on Education:

1. Free and Compulsory Education:

The Constitution makes the following provisions under Article 45 of the Directive Principles of State Policy that, “The state shall endeavour to provide within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory Education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years.”

The expression ‘State’ which occurs in this Article is defined in Article 12 to include “The Government and Parliament of India and the Government and the Legislature of each of the States and all local or other authorities within the territory of India or under the control of the Government of India.” It is clearly directed in Article 45 of the Constitution that the provision of Universal, Free and Compulsory Education becomes the joint responsibility of the Centre and the States.

In the Constitution it was laid down that within 10 years, i.e., by 1960 universal compulsory education must be provided for all children up to the age of 14, But unfortunately, this directive could not be fulfilled. Vigorous efforts are needed to achieve the target of 100 percent primary education. The Central Government needs to make adequate financial provisions for the purpose. At the present rate of progress it may, however, be expected that this directive may be fulfilled by the end of this century.

2. Education of Minorities:

Article 30 of the Indian Constitution relates to certain cultural and educational rights to establish and administer educational institutions.

It lays down:

(i) All minorities whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.

(ii) The state shall not, in granting aid to educational institutions, discriminate against any educational institution on the ground that it is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language.

3. Language Safeguards:

Article 29(1) states “Any section of the citizen, residing in the territory of India or any part there of having a distinct language, script or culture of its own, hall have the right to conserve the same.” Article 350 B provides for the appointment of special officer for linguistic minorities to investigate into all matters relating to safeguards provided for linguistic minorities under the Constitution.

4. Education for Weaker Sections:

Article 15, 17, 46 safeguard the educational interests of the weaker sections of the Indian Community, that is, socially and educationally backward classes of citizens and scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Article 15 states, “Nothing in this article or in clause (2) of Article 29 shall prevent the state from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes.”

Under Article 46 of the Constitution, the federal government is responsible for the economic and educational development of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes

It states. “The state shall promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people and in particular, of the Scheduled castes and Scheduled Tribes and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.” It is one of the Directive Principles of State Policy.

5. Secular Education:

India is a secular country. It is a nation where spirituality based on religion, had always been given a high esteem. Under the Constitution, minorities, whether based on religion or language, are given full rights to establish educational institutions of their choice. Referring to the constitutional provisions that religious instructions given in institutions under any endowment or Trust, should not be interfered with even if such institutions are helped the State.

Article 25 (1) of the Constitution guarantees all the citizens the right to have freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practice and propagate religion.

Article 28 (1) states, “No religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institution if wholly maintained out of state fund.”

Article 28 (2) states, “Nothing in clause (1) shall apply to an educational institution which is administered by the State but has been established under any endowment or Trust which requires that religious instruction shall be imparted to such institution.”

Article 28 (3) states, “No person attending any educational institution by the state or receiving aid out of state funds, shall be required to take part in any religious instruction that may be imported in such institutions or to attend any religious worship that may be conducted in such institution or in any premises attached thereto unless such person or, if such person a minor, his guardian has given his consent thereto.”

Article 30 states, “The state shall not, in granting aid to educational institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, language or any of them.”

6. Equality of Opportunity in Educational Institutions:

Article 29(1) states “No citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, language or any of them.”

The Fundamental Rights of the Indian Constitution has also adopted the fourfold ideal of justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our Constitution laid down that in the eyes of law, everyone should have an equal status, to no one the justice be denied, everyone should have liberty of thought, expression.

The fundamental right of equality clearly signifies that in the eyes of law no distinction can be made on the basis of any position, caste, class or creed. Side by side the right of equality of opportunities to all is also provided. The equality of opportunity is meaningless, unless there are equal opportunities for one’s education.

The well-known Kothari Commission, 1964-66 recommended that Central Government should undertake the responsibility in education for the equalization of educational opportunities with special reference to the reduction of inter-state differences and the advancement of the weaker section of the community.

7. Instruction in Mother -Tongue:

There is diversity of languages in our country. After the dawn of Independence, Mother- Tongues have received special emphasis as medium of instruction and subjects of study. In the Constitution of India, it has been laid down that the study of one’s own language is a fundamental right of the citizens.

Article 26 (1) states, “Any section of the citizens, residing in the territory of India or any part there of, having a distinct language, script or culture of its own, shall have the right to converse the same.”

Article 350 A directs, “It shall he endeavour of every state and every local authority to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother-tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups.”

Secondary Education Commission, 1952-53 recommended that the mother tongue or the regional language should generally be the medium of instruction throughout secondary school stage subject to the provision that for linguistic minorities, special facilities should be made available. Kothori Commission, 1964-66 has also said that at college and university stage, mother-tongue should be the medium. The medium of instruction at school level is already mother-tongue. This is not a new proposal.

8. Promotion of Hindi:

The Indian Constitution makes provision for the development and promotion of Hindi as national language. Article 351 enjoins the Union, the duty to promote the spread of the Hindi language.

Hindi accepted as the Official Language of India as laid down by the Constitution in following words:

“It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression of all the elements of the composite culture of India.” In practice, Hindi is already largely in use as a link language for the country. The educational system should contribute to the acceleration of this process in order to facilitate the movement of student and teacher and to strengthen national Unity.

9. Higher Education and Research:

Parliament has the exclusive rights to enact legislation in respect of institutions and Union Agencies mentioned in entries 63, 64, 65, and 66 of List. The entries which give authority to the Government of India in education are mentioned below:

Entry 63 of the Union List:

The institutions known at the commencement of this Constitution as the Banaras Hindu University, the Aligarh Muslim and the Delhi University, and any other institution declared by Parliament by law to be an Institution of National importance.

Entry 66 of the Union List:

Co-ordination and determination of standards in institution for higher education or research and scientific and technical institutions.

10. Women’s Education:

One of the unique features of Modem Indian Education is the tremendous advancement of Women’s Education. Education of the girls is considered to be more important than that of the boys.

The Constitution makes the following provisions under different articles:

Article 15(1) provides that the State shall not discriminate any citizen on groups only of sex.

Article 15 (3) reads: ”Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for women and children.”

The well-known National Policy on Education was concerned about the status and education of women in the country. It envisages that education would be used as a strategy for achieving a basic change in the status of women. It opined that the national system of education must play a positive role in this direction.

The Policy states, “Education will be used as an agent of basic change in the status of women. In order to neutralize the accumulated distortions of the past, there will be a well conceived edge in favour of women.”

11. Education in the Union Territories:

Article 239 of the Constitution states, “Save as otherwise provided by Parliament by Law, every Union Territory shall be administrator by the president acting to such extent as he thinks fit through an administrator to be appointed by him with such designation as he may specify.”

12. Educational and cultural relations with foreign countries:

Entry 13 of the Union List reads. Participation in international conferences, associations and other bodies and implementing decisions made there at.

Related Articles:

• State Policy and Education in India
• Constitutional Provisions Regarding Right to Education in India

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Why an approved constitutional amendment in New Caledonia led to deadly violence in the French overseas territory

Deadly violence has erupted in New Caledonia, after the French Government approved a constitutional amendment to allow residents who have lived in the territory for at least 10 years to vote in provincial elections. 

The amendment, which some local leaders fear will dilute the vote of the Indigenous Kanak, is the latest flashpoint in a decades-long tussle over France's role in the territory.

At least six people have died following five nights of upheaval, which resulted in torched cars, looted shops, and road barricades, cutting off access to medicine and food.

Where is New Caledonia?

The group of more than 140 islands is an overseas French territory located in the warm waters of the south-west Pacific Ocean. 

It lies about 1,500 kilometres east of Australia, with the islands of Vanuatu and Fiji as its closest neighbours.

The territory has a population of almost 300,000 people, of whom the Indigenous Kanak make up about 40 per cent and those of European origin 24 per cent.

Why does it matter?

The mineral-rich territory is at the centre of a regional power contest between China and Western allies, including France, Australia and the United States.

New Caledonia is the world's third largest producer of nickel — a critical material for making stainless steel, as well as batteries in electronic vehicles (EVs). 

It is one of five island territories in the Indo-Pacific held by France and is central to French President Emmanuel Macron's plan to deepen French influence.

Without naming China, he has previously said France's expansion in the Pacific was to "preserve necessary balances in the region".

But Lowy Institute's Pacific research fellow, Oliver Nobetau, said a heavy-handed response to the ongoing riots by French police could backfire.

"France is trying to re-emerge as a Pacific partner and this will evidently not help that image," he said.

The former Papua New Guinea government adviser on international security deals added that decolonisation in the Pacific was expected. 

This also risks helping China, Australian National University Pacific analyst Graeme Smith said, as the country could weaponise the colonial legacy of Western nations in the Pacific.

"It will play very well because China has been discovering some of the colonial history of the Pacific," he said.

Beijing has pushed to deepen its security ties in the Pacific Islands, strategically located between the US and Asia, with mixed success.

After striking a security pact with the Solomon Islands in 2022 that alarmed Washington, Beijing failed to reach a Pacific-wide trade and security deal.

China shifted attention and financial support to a sub-group, the Melanesian Spearhead Group, formed in 1986 to back decolonisation for Melanesian countries still under colonial rule.

Most notably, New Caledonia's the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS) has been included as a member of the Melanesian Spearhead Group and the Spearhead Group was strident in its criticism of France's part in the crisis.

"These events could have been avoided if the French government had listened and not proceeded to press forward with the Constitutional Bill aimed at unfreezing the electoral roll," MSG chairman and Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai said.

He said France urgently needed to agree to a proposal by the FLNKS to a dialogue and mediation mission led by a mutually agreed mediator, to "discuss a way forward so that normalcy can be restored quickly and an enduring peace can prevail in New Caledonia".

What is its history with France?

After France's colonisation in the 19th century, New Caledonia officially became a French overseas territory in 1946.

Starting in the 1970s, after a nickel boom that drew outsiders, tensions rose on the island, with various conflicts between Paris and Kanak independence movements.

A 1998 Nouméa accord helped end the conflict by outlining a path to gradual autonomy and restricting voting to the Kanak and migrants living in New Caledonia before 1998.

The accord allowed for three referendums to determine the future of the country. In all three, independence was rejected.

Why have tensions exploded recently?

Under the terms of the Nouméa Accord, voting in provincial elections was restricted to people who had resided in New Caledonia prior to 1998, and their children.

The measure was aimed at giving greater representation to the Kanaks, who had become a minority population.

Paris has come to view the arrangement as undemocratic and lawmakers approved a constitutional amendment to open up the electorate to include people who have lived in New Caledonia for at least 10 years.

Mr Macron has said he will delay rubber-stamping it into law, and invite representatives of the territory's population to Paris for talks to reach a negotiated settlement.

However, he said a new agreement must be reached by June, or he will sign it into law.

Editor's note (21/05/2024): This story has been updated to clarify the constitutional amendment relates to residents who have lived in New Caledonia for at least 10 years. An earlier version referred only to 'recent arrivals' in the first paragraph, although the specific details of those affected were outlined further down the article. 

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Houstonians worried most about crime, housing, and economy, Kinder Institute study shows

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Rice University released the 2024 Kinder Houston Area Survey on Monday, revealing much about how Houstonians feel about the region's past, present, and future.

More than 5,300 respondents participated in the survey's 43rd year, which chronicled the changes in southeast Texas and provided a blueprint for the future.

ABC13 learned Houstonians are really concerned about three key things: crime and safety, housing affordability, and the economy.

Despite crime going down since 2020, concerns about crime have risen.

With regard to housing affordability, one in five say it's their biggest concern, and Houston is now a majority-renter city at 60%.

Regarding the economy, 46% of Houstonians said they don't have enough money to cover a $400 emergency, which is up 4% in a year.

One other interesting note about our recent reporting on public education funding , 70% of those surveyed said public schools need more money. Most school districts in Harris County are underfunded.

It's important to note that the survey happened before the HPD scandal regarding the lack of personnel code and before the intense, damaging storms and flooding of the past month.

The survey's results are free to view on the Kinder Institute's website.

For updates on this story, follow Tom Abrahams on Facebook , X and Instagram .

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UGC regulations superseding state laws violates spirit of Constitution

While state laws are drafted by elected representatives, delegated legislation originates from executive bodies lack the same democratic participation.

Co-written with Aneesh Babu

A recurring trend among successive Union governments has been their penchant for encroaching on prerogatives of state governments. During the early deliberations of the Constituent Assembly, a chorus of voices advocated for a model akin to the British Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, envisioning a Centre with limited powers and significant autonomy for states. However, the upheavals surrounding Partition upended the mood, resulting in the adoption of a Constitution imbued with strong unitary features. Despite this, successive Union governments have exhibited a propensity to creep even upon these delimited realms of states.

Education serves as a quintessential example of such incursions. Our founding fathers were resolute in keeping education with states, thus placing it as Entry 11 of the State List under the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. However, during the Emergency, the Constitution (Forty-second) Amendment Act of 1976 altered this by transposing it from the State List to Entry 25 in the Concurrent List. In the wake of this, a crucial development catalysed by the University Grants Commission (UGC) has diminished states’ control over higher education, particularly in universities established under state laws. The tweaking by the UGC in its regulations seemingly at the behest of the Centre, often contradicting state laws, has sought to effectively make the former’s representatives – governors – the sole custodians overseeing universities painstakingly established by states.

Among the several challenges to the primacy of UGC Regulations, none looms larger than the debate around the Union’s stance on its supremacy concerning the selection and appointment of vice-chancellors in state universities. At the heart of this is the concept of subordinate legislation or delegated legislation, a progeny of executive fiat, which refers to rules, regulations, or orders promulgated by executive authorities under the powers conferred upon them by an Act of Parliament or state legislature.

The Centre maintains that any provision within state laws contradicting UGC Regulations shall be deemed “repugnant”. Interestingly, the Supreme Court has accepted this argument in its recent judgments, overlooking a constitutional provision that unequivocally delineates the scope of “repugnancy” between state laws and central regulations. The UGC relied on this “repugnancy factor” in its affidavit filed in another case before the SC to assert the supremacy of its Regulations over state laws. However, constitutional provisions do not uphold this perspective.

The decisions of the SC in Gambhirdan K. Gadhvi v. State of Gujarat & Ors , State of West Bengal Vs. Anindya Sundar Das & Ors. Professor (Dr.) Sreejith P.S v. Dr. Rajasree M.S & Ors , have ignited debates on the constitutional interpretation of the relationship between central regulations vis-à-vis state laws. In these cases, the SC accorded primacy to UGC Regulations over state laws, contending that they formed an integral part of the UGC Act as a subordinate legislation. The SC reasoned that since UGC Regulations and Rules are to be laid before each House of Parliament as per section 28 of the UGC Act, they assume statutory force and become inseparable from the parent Act. However, this interpretation glosses over the constitutional labyrinth it traverses.

Granting primacy to delegated legislation over state enactments not only impinges upon the federal tapestry but also raises profound questions regarding its constitutional legitimacy and ramifications on the constitutional framework governing legislative relations between the Union and states.

The foundational principle embodied in Article 254 of the Constitution serves as the lodestar amidst this entanglement. It delineates a delicate equipoise between parliamentary enactments, pre-constitutional subordinate legislation and state legislation, save for exceptions carved out under presidential assent. The fundamental tenet gleaned from a meticulous examination of Article 254 evinces that in the event of any “repugnancy” between laws enacted by Parliament and state legislatures, the laws made by Parliament shall prevail unless the conflicting state legislation receives the President’s assent. As such, the concept of repugnancy under this Article pertains specifically to conflicts between state laws and substantive laws passed by Parliament, thereby excluding considerations of Rules, Regulations, and the like.

Clause (1) of Article 254 further establishes that if any provision of a law enacted by a state legislature conflicts with a provision of an “existing law” concerning matters enumerated in the Concurrent List, the “existing law” shall take precedence. This underscores the critical distinction between the terms “law” and “existing law” within the purview of Article 254.

Within the Constitution’s definition clause (Article 366), the term “law” lacks a specific definition. The sole provision permitting the inclusion of Rules and Regulations within the ambit of “laws” is Article 13(3)(a) in Part III. However, this provision is confined to determining the validity of laws inconsistent with or derogatory to fundamental rights and does not apply to other parts of the Constitution.

Consequently, the significance of the term “existing laws” becomes paramount. Clause 10 of Article 366 defines ‘existing law” explicitly as “any law, Ordinance, order, bye-law, rule or regulation passed or made before the commencement of this Constitution by any Legislature, authority or person having power to make such a law, Ordinance, order, bye-law, rule or regulation”. Article 366 (10), therefore, allows for a narrow interpretation of Article 254, accommodating only those Rules and Regulations promulgated “before the Constitution’s commencement” under the term “existing law”. Thus, the makers of the Constitution deliberately employed both “Laws” and “Existing Laws” within Article 254 to unequivocally convey their intent that no form of subordinate legislation by the central government or its instrumentalities should render state laws subservient, except for those promulgated prior to the Constitution’s commencement.

As such, since the UGC Act, 1956 came in after the Constitution came into effect and does not pertain to fundamental rights outlined in Part III of the Constitution, the UGC Regulations can neither run pari passu with state laws nor make them subservient. In instances of conflict between UGC Regulations and state laws, the latter should prevail.

Remarkably, this pivotal aspect of “existing law”, outlined in Article 254 in conjunction with Article 366(10), has been overlooked in judgments. By equating subordinate legislation with central laws without delving into the scope of the term “existing laws”, the judiciary has inadvertently expanded the scope of Article 254 beyond its intended purview. This equivalence neglects the difference between legislative and delegated powers, posing grave concerns regarding democratic accountability. While state laws are crafted by elected representatives, delegated legislation originates from executive bodies which, by its nature, lack the democratic participation, scrutiny, and consideration of regional interests and deliberation associated with legislative enactments. The will of a legislature comprising the elected representatives shouldn’t be made subservient to Regulations promulgated by the Executive.

Likewise, the judgments of the Supreme Court in Gambhirdan K Gadhvi and subsequent cases overlooked its own precedent established in Kalyani Mathivanan vs. K.V. Jeyaraj & Ors , wherein it was ruled that UGC Regulations are not binding unless adopted by the state governments.

Therefore, there is a pressing need for recalibration of this jurisprudence to realign with the true essence of Article 254.

Brittas is a CPM Rajya Sabha Member and Babu is a researcher

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Politics | Minnesota House vote delayed on constitutional…

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Politics | Minnesota House vote delayed on constitutional amendment on abortion, other rights

It’s now expected this weekend, ahead of sunday night adjournment.

DFLers in the chamber said it was important for lawmakers to send the question to voters in 2026. If approved in both chambers, Minnesotans would decide whether to add the language to the state’s Constitution.

Republicans, meanwhile, said the amendment could abridge religious freedom and wasn’t transparent in what it would cover.

The proposal is expected to come up for a House vote later this weekend. With three voting days left in the legislative session, it’s not clear whether the measure could clear the Minnesota Senate, where it would need every Democrat’s support.

Bill author Rep. Kaohly Her, DFL-St. Paul, said the state needed more explicit protections in its constitution to prevent future lawmakers or courts from passing laws or issuing rulings that could limit Minnesotans’ rights.

“Case law and statutes are subject to political winds and the makeup of the political leanings of judges,” Her said. “Rights should not hinge on these changes.”

Republicans in the chamber brought several amendments that would exempt private entities from the provision, add protections based on someone’s age and pare back the amendment to solely bar discrimination on the basis of sex.

House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, and other GOP lawmakers said the amendment could limit religious freedom and set back the rights of women and girls.

“Equality is not a political stunt. We believe in equal rights under the law. And the underlying bill does not provide that,” Demuth said. “It would be unconscionable to enshrine favoritism and inequality in the Minnesota State Constitution.”

The bill has spurred a political standoff at the Capitol over other issues, including a capital investment bill, a raft of budget touch-up bills, a proposal to legalize sports betting and a proposal to boost funding to rural emergency medical services.

House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said Thursday that the House would move forward with the bill, even as Republicans pledged to pull votes for a public construction project bill if the equal rights amendment moved forward.

“We will never trade infrastructure projects against Minnesotans’ civil rights,” Hortman told reporters. “We absolutely will not bargain on that.”

GOP leaders at the Capitol said publicly this week they want Democrats to drop the ERA as part of a deal to pass a capital investment bill. Republicans have leverage over the bill and related issues because their supermajority votes are needed to let the state take on debt to fund projects.

Demuth said Thursday the bonding bill was in jeopardy because Democrats weren’t meaningfully including Republicans in negotiations. She said that and efforts to cut off debate on the House floor Wednesday left GOP lawmakers frustrated.

“I would say everything is at risk right now,” Demuth told reporters. “Bonding, sports betting, Uber/Lyft (driver minimum wage), everything where Republican votes may be needed is at risk because of the action taken last night.”

Even if their votes aren’t needed to pass, Republicans could have a hand in what gets done before the end of the legislative session. They can burn down the remaining hours with floor debates and amendments.

Hortman has said she would cut off debate if it seems Republican members are drawing out debate to postpone votes.

Gov. Tim Walz said he hopes Republicans will limit drawn out debates on the floor and allow the equal rights amendment to come up for a vote.

“They’re holding up legislative work up there, because they don’t want Minnesotans to vote (on) whether women should have equal protections under the law and have reproductive freedoms,” Walz said Friday.

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Election | Colorado voters will decide abortion rights…

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Election | Colorado voters will decide abortion rights question after constitutional amendment qualifies for ballot

Measure also would require state-provided health insurance to pay for abortions.

Advocates for the measure turned in 159,930 valid signatures last month — more than enough to place the question on the ballot, according to the state agency.

The ballot measure , if approved by 55% of voters, would prohibit state and local governments from outlawing or impeding access to abortions. It would also require abortion to be covered under health insurance plans for state and local government employees as well as enrollees in state and local government insurance programs.

Currently, state-provided insurance such as Medicaid is not legally allowed to pay for abortions in most cases.

“Colorado voters have made it clear over and over again that they support abortion rights, and we are confident they will again in November,” said Karen Middleton, president of Cobalt, a pro-abortion access nonprofit, in a news release Friday. She also is co-chair of Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom.

State law already protects abortion rights, but placing those protections in the state constitution would make it more difficult to restrict abortion access. State lawmakers can repeal a law, but changing the state constitution requires a statewide vote.

People pursuing ballot initiatives that seek to change the state constitution must collect 123,238 signatures, including from at least 2% of registered voters in each of the state’s 35 state senate districts.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization reversed the federal right to an abortion, prompting a wave of lawmaking across the country. Some states enacted bans and restrictions on abortions, while others have worked to further protect access .

Backers of a separate ballot measure that sought to ban abortions in Colorado failed to gather enough signatures by an April 18 deadline to be placed on the ballot.

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