Does North Carolina’s constitutional right to education matter?

Five months have passed since the North Carolina Supreme Court issued its fifth and final decision in Leandro.

We are past the initial flurry of articles and assessments. We have had time to sift through what remains, to sort out some options for moving forward. In that vein, let us consider together what is possible in this post-Leandro world.

First, we can begin by disentangling the litigation from the constitution.  

We might think of Leandro as a major funding lawsuit. With the 2022 Leandro IV opinion, we had a prescribed path requiring the state to implement a comprehensive remedial plan that included a substantial infusion of state funds.

This is gone. It is no longer a part of our constitutional landscape other than as a piece of history that may or may not be persuasive to courts in the future. 

Leandro v. State has also been about interpreting the meaning of the constitutional right to education. An “equal opportunity to a sound basic education” is the North Carolina Supreme Court’s interpretation of our state constitution. This, and other interpretations by the state Supreme Court on the nature of the right, remain.

What is most enduring is what is in the constitution itself. Article I of our state constitution, the Declaration of Rights, provides that “the people shall have a right to the privilege of education and it is the duty of the state to guard and maintain that right.” Notice the affirmative mandate on the state to “guard and maintain.” We are the only state in the country to have an affirmative education right like this. This right was introduced at our 1868 Constitutional Convention. You can learn more about how this right emerged in this Let History Speak presentation on YouTube.  

Within Article IX, which governs education, the constitution has provided since 1868 (with only slight modification) that “the General Assembly shall provide by taxation and otherwise for a general and uniform system of free public schools wherein equal opportunities shall be provided for all students.”

Once again, we see the mandate rests with the state, or more specifically here with the legislative branch, to provide for the system. The “equal opportunities” language was added when the constitution was rewritten in 1971. At the same time, segregation language added in the 1950s to defy Brown v. Board of Education was removed. “Equal opportunities” is powerful language to find in a constitution. 

What remains of Leandro?

The North Carolina Supreme Court relied on these two sections of the constitution to pronounce that every child of this state has an opportunity to receive a sound basic education in our public schools.

In this first opinion in the Leandro lawsuit in 1997, the Supreme Court went on to say that “[a]t the time this provision was originally written in 1868 … the intent of the framers was that every child have a fundamental right to a sound basic education which would prepare the child to participate fully in society as it existed in his or her lifetime.”

Oftentimes when courts go back to the original intent of the constitution, the interpretation can feel stuck or frozen in time. Not here. The concept of being able to participate fully in society organically evolves since it is based on “his or her lifetime.” We could shorten that phrase to a right to thrive. For example, artificial intelligence (AI) could hardly have been conceived of in 1868. Now, it may be fair to say that understanding AI is necessary to thrive.

Through Leandro, we also have an understanding of the scope of the right as it relates to a person’s age. The constitution itself is broad in vesting “the people” with the right to the privilege of education. Leandro made this more specific, finding that the constitutional right vests beginning in infancy, meaning that if the state needs to provide services or systems to infants in order to prepare them for obtaining a sound basic education, then it is within the scope of the constitutional mandate. So far, this concept has been applied to “at-risk pre-enrollees.” The General Assembly, in response to the Leandro lawsuit, chose to expand pre-K to these young children.

If you remember anything from this lawsuit, especially trial court Judge Howard E. Manning Jr.’s impact, it may be what we’ve come to call the tenets of Leandro. In short, these are providing certified, well-trained teachers; well-trained, competent principals; and adequate instructional resources.

And finally, one of the key concepts that remains from the Supreme Court’s interpretation and the constitution itself is that the state cannot shift responsibility to local school boards, or to school leaders, or to educators. It can’t say that school boards didn’t spend the funds wisely. It can’t say that leaders failed to train or assign the teachers properly. It can’t say that teachers failed to educate children. Or, perhaps more specifically, the state can say those things, but then it has the constitutional responsibility to fix them. The buck stops with the state. This makes sense given that the state created the local school boards and systems for delivering education.

Those are the fundamental principles that remain. So what no longer exists as part of the constitutional right to education?

We don’t have the Supreme Court’s interpretation provided in the fourth Leandro opinion in 2022. That opinion brought us a hair’s breadth from the finish line. It said that, yes, there have been statewide constitutional violations for which the state is responsible; yes, the comprehensive remedial plan — agreed upon by the executive branch and the plaintiffs — was an appropriate plan to remedy the violations; and yes, if the General Assembly did not allocate sufficient funding, the trial court could order the executive branch to disburse the needed funds from the state reserves.

What happened to Leandro IV? 

The General Assembly, as defendant-intervenors, appealed Leandro IV. The Supreme Court accepted the appeal on the limited question of whether the trial court had subject matter jurisdiction (or authority to hear the issues before it). The Supreme Court held oral arguments in February 2024. Over two years later, in April 2026, in a 4-3 decision, the majority put an end to this 30-plus-year lawsuit on procedural grounds. 

The Supreme Court said in 2026 that the nature of the case began as a lawsuit presenting evidence of deficiencies in particular school districts and shifted to one raising questions of the constitutionality of the entire state system. The court held that the plaintiffs failed to raise this shift with the trial court and to fashion the case in a way for the trial court to continue to have jurisdiction. 

Rather than sending the case back to the trial court for the plaintiffs to fix these named procedural errors, the Supreme Court dismissed the case with prejudice. This put an end to the litigation. Even the more limited violations in Hoke County Schools that were affirmed in the second Leandro opinion were dismissed with prejudice so that Hoke County Schools cannot pursue remedies to constitutional violations by the state within this lawsuit.

Finally, in Leandro V, the Supreme Court held that all court decisions made after July 24, 2017, when the case was expanded to seek a statewide remedy (which the plaintiffs would say was always the aim), were “void ab initio” — or as if they never happened.

Even with this ruling of void ab initio, we can still review the comprehensive remedial plan crafted through this litigation as a potential guide. Lawyers can still look to the reasoning in Leandro IV and with a different court composition, may find it persuasive again. For example, the question of the trial court’s authority to order the executive branch to release funding is now an open question: Leandro IV said yes, but this decision is as if it didn’t happen. Leandro V raised questions about the trial court’s authority, but the question was not before the court, so its observations are presumably not binding. 

What comes next after Leandro?

That’s where we have been. Where could we go from here?

First, imagine that as an education community, we have an integrated strategy around advocacy, legislation, and litigation. We would agree on what matters most and how to achieve it. While there certainly have been efforts to collaborate, the structure of the Leandro lawsuit did not lend itself easily to full collaboration. This is an extraordinary opportunity to begin anew. 

Within this framework, we can decide on how and when enforcing the constitutional right through litigation makes sense. Given the procedural difficulties created by the Supreme Court in Leandro V, a major school funding lawsuit seems unlikely in the near future. Nonetheless, there are still many possibilities for litigation that could be a part of a larger plan to “prepare the child to participate fully in society as it existed in his or her lifetime” or to enable children to thrive.

We can explore enforcing rights that have already been defined by the North Carolina Supreme Court. Going back to the “tenets of Leandro,” we can explore issues like certified, qualified teachers in every classroom. Have we met this mandate in every classroom across the state? Likely not. As an issue that had been included in the comprehensive remedial plan, we can pick it up and explore options for enforcing this right.

Another vested right is for at-risk preenrollees. The General Assembly has chosen to respond to this right by expanding access to pre-K for at-risk children. Are there gaps in service? Gaps in quality? That could be something to explore.

We can also use litigation to further define the constitutional right to education. For example, Manning chose not to explore this issue as it relates to children with disabilities. He was focusing on test scores as one of the means for determining whether a sound basic education had been obtained and didn’t want to complicate the analysis by introducing a group of children for whom there might be different standards. Because this trial court assessment was not reviewed by appellate courts, the application of the constitutional rights to students with disabilities is an open question. For example, the state legislative cap on the percentage of students who are identified as having disabilities for funding purposes could be challenged as being inconsistent with the right of every child to the opportunity to a sound basic education.

Another issue rejected by Manning that could be resurrected is school facilities and infrastructure. Manning declined to consider issues related to the quality of the buildings, essentially finding that the setting simply didn’t matter much. Our state statutes create a bifurcation that holds counties responsible for buildings and the state for personnel. In reality,  it is much more entangled, with the state sometimes picking up building costs and counties often balancing infrastructure needs against teacher supplements and other personnel needs that have not been met by the state. Given the state’s ultimate responsibility for education, adequate funding for buildings and infrastructure could be an issue ripe for litigation.

There are also issues that were not a part of the lawsuit initiated in 1994 that have become more significant over time. We lived through COVID-19. Western and eastern North Carolina have suffered severe flood damage. And we can expect more large-scale disasters. Arguably, our “general and uniform system” doesn’t fully address what happens when a school or school district is unable to meet the needs of their students in the wake of a disaster. Education is disrupted. Attendance becomes more spotty. Mental health issues soar. This could be a funding issue. It could also be a path to being more creative on domicile or other obstacles that stand in the way of meeting the needs of these students.

Transportation is another issue to consider. We’ve worked with the constraints of a state formula that is designed for efficiency rather than meeting the needs of each child. Add to this the issue of school closures that may cause students to take exceedingly long bus rides to get to and from school. When could access to education become a constitutional issue?

We may also want to pay attention to when statutes could conflict with the constitutional right to education. For example, as described earlier, the constitution has language specifically on equal opportunities. This requires looking at issues of equity and whether any student or classification of students is not receiving an equal opportunity. If a law thwarts the ability of local boards, leaders, and educators to address equal opportunities, the courts could find it unconstitutional.

Litigation could also answer questions about the nature of our “general and uniform system of free public schools.” For example, how should charter schools be treated? As charter schools become more ingrained in the landscape of public education, it seems like a façade to think of them as experimental laboratories of reform.

Put another way, if parents chose to send a child to a public charter school that has been in existence for, say, 10 years, do the parents imagine that they are waiving their child’s constitutional right to a sound basic education in order to engage in experimental education, or do they see themselves as electing one of the choices for public schools made available to them? There are other publicly funded schools outside of the long-standing model of school districts: university lab schools, regional schools, and the UNC-governed School of the Arts and School of Science and Mathematics. As our system expands, we should know how constitutional rights are implicated.

And finally, the clear constitutional obligation of the state to create and maintain a “general and uniform system” of public schools raises questions about how it funds education options outside of this system. As part of existing appellate court opinions, we know that the General Assembly can choose to experiment and fund options outside of the system. But here’s the twist: Can the General Assembly fund vouchers or other private options if it has not adequately funded the public schools to provide an opportunity for a sound basic education? 

Does the right to education matter?

These are some potential litigation strategies. There are certainly more. And there is no assurance that any will be initiated. After all, litigation requires funding, as well as people and entities willing to be a part of a lawsuit. The bigger issue, though, is whether lawsuits like this matter.

Which brings us back to the beginning. Does the North Carolina constitutional right to education matter?

Perhaps we should step back and ask more broadly: Do government constitutions matter? We have rights that originate out of what we call our organic law or constitutions. These include the right to vote, free speech, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure by government, freedom to assemble, freedom of religion, and the right to due process. If our state and federal constitutions don’t matter, is it the Wild West as it applies to some of the rights that we hold most dear? Who chooses which are respected and which are ignored?

Here is a teacher’s perspective: “I am a school teacher and I find it hard to teach students to obey and respect our laws, when at the same time many of our political leaders are openly showing very little respect for our laws.”

That might seem like it was written yesterday, but it was written by Joe Carroll Mathews, of East Bend, North Carolina, on March 25, 1956, during the resistance to Brown v. Board of Education.

At the time the teacher wrote this, the federal constitution was regarded as a beacon for democracy. I happened upon a slide used in 1919-1920 as part of the “Better America” lecture series by the Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis. He quotes William Pitt as saying that the U.S. Constitution “will be the wonder and admiration of all future generations and the model of all future constitutions.”

This same lecture series encouraged public schools to focus on democracy. Essentially, Hillis’ argument was that better schools lead to better-informed citizens, which leads to a stronger democracy that can withstand authoritarian or revolutionary movements. Considering that this was just after World War I, it is no surprise that public schools would be seen as an essential element for strengthening democracy. 

This aspiration also closely aligns with a part of the North Carolina Supreme Court’s definition of a sound basic education: “sufficient fundamental knowledge of geography, history, and basic economic and political systems to enable the student to make informed choices with regard to issues that affect the student personally or affect the student’s community, state, and nation.”

Since many of EdNC’s readers are connected to the system of public education, I want to pause to drive home this issue: As education leaders, you have the opportunity to help develop the next generation of citizens to understand and care about these issues.

There are many resources available to you. Through my nonprofit initiative, “Let History Speak,” we have developed free resources aligned with the 11th-grade social studies standard course of study that engage students in issues of democracy grounded in experiences in North Carolina. With generous support from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, history teacher Craig Carlson and instructional designer Morgan Robinson prepared lesson plan materials that are available for free on Google and Canvas. 

As we consider constitutional rights, it is interesting to see how constitutional alignment is affecting the most frontier issues in our society. When Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s agents act contrary to their constitutions, for example, such as by deceiving humans or taking control, this aberration poses grave threats to humanity and the planet. The AI agents are trained on their constitutions and models of behavior, so it is unexpected when they act outside of these mandates. The experts talk about this as a misalignment. Adding this context, we might refine our question to whether a constitutional right to education matters enough to correct misalignments.

Because here’s the thing.

The North Carolina constitutional right to education is robust. It is one of the best in the country.

We have plenty of potential litigation strategies for extending and enforcing the right.

The question is, do we, the people, have the will?

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Editor’s note: Ann McColl is an attorney and state constitutional scholar, who has worked in the field of education law and policy since graduating from the UNC Law School in 1991. She has written for EdNC about Leandro since our founding. Here is her “everything you need to know about Leandro” article.