Citizens for Strong Schools, Inc. v. Florida State Board of Education
After a decade of litigation and a four-week bench trial, the Florida Supreme Court approved the First District's rejection of a system-wide challenge claiming the State breached its article IX, section 1(a) duty to make adequate provision for a 'uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality' public school system. The Court held that, as in Coalition for Adequacy & Fairness in School Funding v. Chiles, the plaintiffs failed to present any judicially manageable standard that would avoid intrusion into the Legislature's appropriations and policymaking powers. The Court also held that plaintiffs' failure to prove a causal relationship between funding levels and student outcomes supplied an independent basis for rejecting their claims.
Key facts
- Citizens for Strong Schools, Inc. challenged the Florida State Board of Education, claiming the State failed to provide a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality public school system in violation of the Florida Constitution.
- After a decade of litigation and a four-week bench trial in the trial court, the First District rejected the system-wide adequacy challenge, and the Florida Supreme Court approved that decision.
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Why it matters
This is the Florida Supreme Court's definitive statement that article IX education-adequacy litigation is largely nonjusticiable, reaffirming and extending Coalition v. Chiles notwithstanding the 1998 constitutional… — full analysis with a trial
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