LOUISIANA

Constitutional Clause/Language

“The legislature shall provide for the education of the people of the state and shall establish and maintain a public educational system.” La. Const. art. VIII, s.1.

Major Court Decision: Charlet v. Legis. of the State of Louisiana, 713 So.2d 1199 (La. 1998).

Result: Financing system upheld

Summary:  The Court held that in Louisiana education is not a fundamental right.  The Court refused to require the legislature to provide for an adequate education because the constitution does not mandate any particular level of quality.

Key Quotes:

“None of this evidence establishes that, simply because the plaintiffs happen to fall within a class of persons living in school districts with fewer taxable resources, the state's formula for school funding is designed to discriminate against them. On the contrary, the system being used is moving to equalize some of these inherent disparities by allocating more funds to those districts. As the court noted in the Livingston case, ‘the system cannot be condemned because it imperfectly and incompletely effectuates the state's goals.’” Id. at 1206.

“The Louisiana Constitution does not require that the educational funding provided by the state be ‘adequate’ or ‘sufficient,’ or that it achieve some measurable result for each pupil or each school district. Article VIII, Section 13(B) requires only that BESE annually develop and adopt a formula; this is being done.” Id.

“Article I, Section 3 commands the courts to decline enforcement of a legislative classification of individuals in three different situations: (1) When the law classifies individuals by race or religious beliefs, it shall be repudiated completely;  (2) When the statute classifies persons on the basis of birth, age, sex, culture, physical condition, or political ideas or affiliations, its enforcement shall be refused unless the state or other advocate of the classification shows that the classification has a reasonable basis; (3) When the law classifies individuals on any other basis, it shall be rejected whenever a member of a disadvantaged class shows that it does not suitably further any appropriate state interest. With the adoption of these guarantees Louisiana moved from a position of having no equal protection clause to that of having three provisions going beyond the decisional law construing the Fourteenth Amendment.”  Id. at 1205.

“...if some funding is being provided by the State to every school district, the State has met whatever quantification may be implied by the word “minimum” in the constitutional provision. It is not necessary for this court to re-define a word which has a generally accepted meaning in common usage.”  Id. at 1207.