CIV. LIBERTIES UNION v. State
Decision Date | 15 February 2005 |
Citation | 791 N.Y.S.2d 507,4 N.Y.3d 175,824 N.E.2d 947 |
Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
Parties | NEW YORK CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION et al., Appellants, v. STATE OF NEW YORK et al., Respondents. |
New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation, New York City (Arthur N. Eisenberg, Christopher Dunn and Donald Shaffer of counsel), for appellants.
Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General, Albany (Denise A. Hartman, Caitlin J. Halligan and Daniel Smirlock of counsel), for respondents.
Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler LLP, New York City (Phyllis S. Wallitt, Catherine A. Williams and Eugene M. Gelernter of counsel), for Alliance for Quality Education and others, amici curiae.
Before: Judges G.B. SMITH, CIPARICK, ROSENBLATT and GRAFFEO concur; Judges READ and R.S. SMITH concur only in result.
Plaintiffs bring suit against the State and its agencies responsible for education, alleging that students in 27 named schools outside of New York City are being denied the opportunity for a sound basic education.1 Although plaintiffs raise two separate claims, one alleging a constitutional violation and the other a regulatory violation, both in effect request the same relief—that the State determine the causes of failure of each of the cited schools, and do something to correct it. We agree with the courts below that plaintiffs' complaint fails to state a cause of action.
Plaintiffs' first cause of action is brought under the Education Article of the State Constitution, which declares that "[t]he legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free common schools, wherein all the children of this state may be educated" (NY Const, art XI, § 1). Although the Constitution does not require equality of educational offerings throughout the state (see Board of Educ., Levittown Union Free School Dist. v Nyquist, 57 NY2d 27 [1982]
[Levittown]), it does mandate that the opportunity for a sound basic education be provided to all. Thus, a cause of action may be stated under the Education Article when the State fails in its obligation to meet minimum constitutional standards of educational quality.
Fundamentally, an Education Article claim requires two elements: the deprivation of a sound basic education, and causes attributable to the State. As our case law makes clear, even gross educational inadequacies are not, standing alone, enough to state a claim under the Education Article. Plaintiffs' failure to sufficiently plead causation by the State is fatal to their claim.
Defendants counter that, in order to be cognizable, a claim brought under the Education Article must allege that any educational deficiencies complained of resulted from inadequate funding. Because, in defendants' view, plaintiffs do not base their complaint squarely on an allegation of funding failure, the action must be dismissed. Plaintiffs, however, insist that their allegation that the State has not provided sufficient "educational resources" necessarily includes a lack of financial resources.2 Indeed, the amended complaint expressly alleges that Nevertheless, even construing plaintiffs' allegations liberally, as we must (see Leon v Martinez, 84 NY2d 83, 87 [1994]
), we conclude that the complaint fails to state a cognizable claim.
Plaintiffs contend that, to the extent they have alleged multiple causes for the failure of their schools, such allegations should not defeat their action. To be sure, there may be several causal links to a single outcome—the Education Article does not require that there be a single cause in order for plaintiffs to state a claim. The defect here, however, is not that plaintiffs have alleged too many causes, but that they have failed to clearly allege even one.
True, plaintiffs contend that their schools are, among other things, insufficiently funded, but the gravamen of their complaint is not that more money is needed in these schools. Rather, it is that the State must undertake to figure out what is needed, which might well include money, and provide it. At bottom, plaintiffs' claim is not premised on any alleged failure of the State to provide "resources"—financial or otherwise—but seeks to charge the State with the responsibility to determine the causes of the schools' inadequacies and devise a plan to remedy them. An Education Article claim, however, requires a clear articulation of the asserted failings of the State, sufficient for the State to know what it will be expected to do should the plaintiffs prevail.
Thus, in Paynter v State of New York (100 NY2d 434, 441 [2003]), we held that "allegations of academic failure alone, without allegations that the State somehow fails in its obligation to provide minimally acceptable educational services, are insufficient to state a cause of action under the Education Article." In Paynter, the plaintiffs conceded that the State had sufficiently funded the Rochester City School District, but faulted the State for alleged "practices and policies that have resulted in high concentrations of racial minorities and poverty in the school district, leading to abysmal student performance" (100 NY2d at 438). Although they did not claim any inadequacy of inputs, the Paynter plaintiffs maintained that the State had nevertheless failed in its obligation to provide a sound basic education by neglecting to mitigate demographic factors that may affect student performance. In their view, "no matter how well the State funds their schools, if plaintiffs and their classmates fail, it is the State's responsibility to change the school population until the results improve" (100 NY2d at 441).
As the Appellate Division noted, plaintiffs do not request a judgment directing the State to provide additional financial aid to their school districts. The requested relief here bypasses the districts and instead seeks to mandate that the State provide money or other resources directly to individual schools. Requiring the State to intervene on a school-by-school basis to determine each of the 27 named school's sources of failure and devise a remedial plan would, as we explained in Paynter, subvert local control and violate the constitutional principle that districts make the basic decisions on funding and operating their own schools.
Plaintiffs misinterpret our recognition in Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc. v State of New York (100 NY2d 893 [2003] [CFE II]) that education is ultimately a responsibility of the...
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