RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina’s highest court ended a three-decade legal fight over school funding Thursday, delivering a decision that ensures state lawmakers, not judges, will continue controlling education spending decisions.
In a narrow 4-3 vote driven by the court’s Republican majority, justices overturned a significant 2022 decision made when Democrats controlled the bench. That earlier ruling had granted a lower court judge authority to direct state tax dollars toward addressing persistent educational inequalities.
A year later, a trial judge determined North Carolina owed $678 million as part of a comprehensive eight-year plan worth billions. The plan aimed to boost teacher pay and recruitment, expand early childhood programs, and provide additional support for students with disabilities.
Chief Justice Paul Newby explained in Thursday’s opinion that what began as a limited legal challenge regarding one county’s school spending had transformed into “a full-scale, facial assault on the entire educational system enacted by the General Assembly.” Newby argued judicial involvement had overstepped appropriate boundaries.
“When the case expanded the trial court’s authority to hear the case likewise ceased,” Newby stated while ordering the school funding case dismissed.
The ruling comes more than two years after justices heard arguments in the case. Republican legislators, who maintain control of the General Assembly, will no longer face court-ordered requirements to implement the remedial plan while crafting state budgets, including this year’s spending plan that remains months overdue.
Democratic Governor Josh Stein must now depend on legislative persuasion and veto threats to advance his preferred education programs. Stein served as the state’s attorney general when the 2022 ruling was issued.
“The Supreme Court simply ignored its own established precedent, enabling the General Assembly to continue to deprive another generation of North Carolina students of the education promised by our constitution,” Stein said Thursday.
Three justices opposed Thursday’s majority decision, including two Democrats and one Republican.
Democratic Associate Justice Anita Earls criticized the ruling as focusing more on procedural concerns than student welfare.
“Allowing the state to escape judicial scrutiny for constitutional rights violations through its behavior during litigation quickly turns constitutional rights into words on paper — morally compelling but functionally useless,” Earls wrote in her dissent.
Focus now shifts to developing the next state education budget as the General Assembly prepares to reconvene this month. Education represents nearly 40% of North Carolina’s annual $30 billion operating budget.
Republican Senate leader Phil Berger celebrated the decision, stating in a press release that “liberal education special interests have improperly tried to hijack North Carolina’s constitutional funding process in order to impose their policy preferences via judicial fiat. Today’s decision confirms that the proper pathway for policymaking is the legislative process.”
GOP critics have highlighted taxpayer-funded private school vouchers as evidence that more resources could benefit public school students.
The legal battle originated in 1994 when several low-income school districts and student families filed suit, claiming the state violated North Carolina’s constitution by failing to provide sufficient education funding.
The case became known as “Leandro,” named after one of the original student plaintiffs.
Previous state Supreme Court decisions in 1997 and 2004 established that the constitution guarantees all children an “opportunity to receive a sound basic education,” while finding the state inadequately prepared to meet this requirement. Many argue this fundamental problem persists today.
“The people paying the price for our leaders’ failure are not abstractions. They are the generations of children in rural communities, past and present, who waited for 30 years for a promise never fulfilled,” said Tamika Walker Kelly, president of the North Carolina Association of Educators.
The court’s 2022 Democratic majority had concluded that earlier Supreme Court rulings, combined with the constitution’s education guarantee and years of legislative inaction, created exceptional circumstances allowing the late Judge David Lee to mandate spending without specific legislative authorization.
