Court Holds Low Kansas School Funding Unconstitutional, Lawmakers Respond By Attacking Constitution

Just weeks after a three judge panel unanimously ruled the Kansas legislature was failing to meet its constitutionally defined responsibility to suitably fund the state’s education needs, conservative Kansas legislators responded with a proposal to limit judicial oversight of education funding. The January ruling ordered the legislature to raise education funding around $400 million to return the state’s schools to reasonable standards and called out the hypocrisy of cuts given other “priorities” pursued by the legislature at the same time:

The court said it was “illogical” for the state to argue that it could not adequately fund schools at the same time it slashed income taxes.

The ruling is the latest in a series of court victories for a group of public school districts, parents and students in Kansas who have demanded for years that the state provide more money for education.

A funding plan was devised for Kansas in 2006 through a settlement of a prior lawsuit but the groups filed suit again in 2010 when the state made an estimated $300 million in funding cuts. The state made even more cuts in 2011. There have been $511 million in cuts to the base funding between fiscal year 2009 and fiscal 2012.”

Rather than accept the decision and provide Kansan students with adequate funding, last week conservative legislators introduced a constitutional amendments intended to reduce judicial influence and Attorney General Derek Schmidt (R) appealed the ruling.

The large conservative majorities in both chambers of the Kansas legislature, have pursued an aggressive agenda under Governor Sam Brownback, including gutting arts funding, and attempting to end income taxes.

Kansas is not alone in constitutionally requiring education funding standards, with many other states including New Jersey and Washington fighting similar battles over education funding in recent years. Just yesterday, a District Judge ruled Texas’s school-finance system unconstitutional due to funding disparities between richer and poorer districts.

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Corporate Lobby Threatens A Blizzard Of Litigation Attacking Wall Street Reform And Environmental Protection

Yesterday, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue delivered his “State of American Business” address, in which he laid out the wealthy corporate lobbying group’s agenda for the coming year. After using several questionable statistics to attack regulations intended to protect the environment or prevent Wall Street from triggering another economic crisis, Donohue’s speech includes a promise to unleash a barrage of well-compensated lawyers to help immunize corporate America from these regulations. “You are going to see us significantly expand the expertise in our law firm, the National Chamber Litigation Center and in other areas of our institution, in order to deal with regulations. Our preference is always to work within the legislative and regulatory processes and we do that on a daily basis. But when rights have been trampled on, or regulators have overstepped their bounds, we’ll take the necessary legal action.”

So long as the Supreme Court’s current majority sits, the Chamber’s threat needs to be taken seriously. One of the Chamber’s top attorneys, Supreme Court litigator Carter Phillips, claimed in 2007 that “[e]xcept for the solicitor general representing the United States, no single entity has more influence on what cases the Supreme Court decides and how it decides them than the National Chamber Litigation Center.” If anything, this understates the corporate lobby’s success before the Roberts Court. According to a 2010 study by the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center, the Chamber’s victory rate before the Supreme Court spiked 15 points once Chief Justice Roberts took the Court’s center seat. In total the Court favors business interests 61 percent of the time.

Indeed, the Roberts Court is so favorable to the corporate lobby’s position that every single justice examined by the study was more likely to favor the Chamber’s position that the one who held that seat 25 years before:

If anything, the Roberts Court has become even more favorable to corporate interests since this study was conducted. In the term that concluded earlier this year, the Chamber went 7-0 before the justices — the first time since 1991 that the Chamber was undefeated in the nation’s highest Court.

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