Haridopolos v. Citizens for Strong Sch., Inc., 1D10–6285.

• Decision Date: 06 January 2012
• Docket Number: No. 1D10–6285.,1D10–6285.
• Citation: 277 Ed. Law Rep. 1214,81 So.3d 465
• Parties: Mike HARIDOPOLOS, in his official capacity as the Florida Senate President; Dean Cannon, in his official capacity as the Florida Speaker of the House of Representatives; Dr. Eric J. Smith, in his official capacity as Florida Commissioner of Education; and Florida State Board of Education, Petitioners, v. CITIZENS FOR STRONG SCHOOLS, INC.; Fund Education Now; Eunice Barnum; Janiyah Williams; Jacque Williams; Sheila Andrews; Rose Nogueras; and Alfredo Nogueras, Respondents.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

277 Ed. Law Rep. 1214

81 So.3d 465

Mike HARIDOPOLOS, in his official capacity as the Florida Senate President; Dean Cannon, in his official capacity as the Florida Speaker of the House of Representatives; Dr. Eric J. Smith, in his official capacity as Florida Commissioner of Education; and Florida State Board of Education, Petitioners,

v.CITIZENS FOR STRONG SCHOOLS, INC.; Fund Education Now; Eunice Barnum; Janiyah Williams; Jacque Williams; Sheila Andrews; Rose Nogueras; and Alfredo Nogueras, Respondents.

No. 1D10–6285.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

Nov. 23, 2011.Rehearing Denied Jan. 6, 2012.

Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, Scott D. Makar, Solicitor General, Jonathan Glogau, Special Counsel, Timothy Osterhaus, Deputy Solicitor General, and Lois S. Tepper, Interim General Counsel, Department of Education, Tallahassee, for Petitioners.

Jodi Siegel, Neil Chonin, Natalie N. Maxwell, Southern Legal Counsel, Inc., Gainesville, E. Thom Rumberger of Rumberger, Kirk & Caldwell, Tallahassee, Jon L. Mills of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, Miami, Timothy McLendon, Gainesville, and Deborah Cupples, Gainesville, for Respondents.

EN BANC

BENTON, C.J.

After the trial judge denied their motion to dismiss respondents' amended complaint for declaratory and supplemental relief, the President of the Florida Senate, the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, the Commissioner of Education, and the State Board of Education filed a petition for writ of prohibition, initiating original proceedings here in an effort to bring further proceedings in the circuit court to a halt. Because the present case lies at the intersection of well established rules governing writs of prohibition and significant, but unsettled, questions about Florida's “paramount duty” to provide “for the education of all children residing within its borders,” Art. IX, § 1(a), Fla. Const., we deny the petition for writ of prohibition, but certify a question of great public importance to the Supreme Court of Florida.

Petitioners are defendants in the pending lawsuit that two not-for-profit corporations, two students attending public schools in Duval County, and four parents or guardians of students attending public school, either in Duval or in Pasco Counties,¹ brought in Leon County Circuit Court. The respondents' amended complaint for declaratory and supplemental relief, which the trial court declined to dismiss, alleges wide-ranging violations of article IX, section 1(a), which states, in relevant part:

The education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the State of Florida. It is, therefore, a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders. Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education....

Art. IX, § 1(a), Fla. Const. In the course of its 135 paragraphs, respondents' amended complaint alleges a failure to make adequate provision “for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools” by, e.g., providing insufficient funding for public education, shifting responsibility for educational funding to local governments, providing inadequate resources for teachers' salaries in particular, and adopting a so-called accountability policy that is an obstacle to high quality.

The amended complaint alleges that Florida's public schools are not safe and secure, that graduation rates are too low, that student promotion and retention policies are ineffective, that results of achievement tests reveal various inadequacies, and much more. Petitioners moved to dismiss the amended complaint, relying on Coalition for Adequacy and Fairness in School Funding, Inc. v. Chiles, 680 So.2d 400, 407 (Fla.1996), for the proposition that the amended complaint raises only nonjusticiable “political” questions, see Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 209, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962), questions which the trial court—and, indeed, any court (according to the petitioners)—lacks jurisdiction to entertain. Rejecting petitioners' argument that it lacked jurisdiction to decide any facet of any one of the respondents' claims, the trial court denied the motion to dismiss.

“ ‘In this state, circuit courts are superior courts of general jurisdiction, and nothing is intended to be outside their jurisdiction except that which clearly and specially appears so to be.’ ” Mandico v. Taos Constr., Inc., 605 So.2d 850, 854 (Fla.1992) (quoting English v. McCrary, 348 So.2d 293, 297 (Fla.1977)). The petitioners' apprehension at the prospect of burdensome discovery demands unduly discounts the protections they and all litigants will enjoy because any discovery that may occur will take place under the supervision of the able trial judge, if and as needed. More fundamentally, the petitioners' asserted concerns about discovery do not speak to the only issue that is germane in prohibition proceedings: the nature and extent of the lower tribunal's jurisdiction. A court of general jurisdiction, the circuit court has statutory authority to entertain claims for declaratory judgment. See §§ 86.011 and 86.061, Fla. Stat. (2010). Even if erroneous, the denial of a motion to dismiss is ordinarily no occasion for a reviewing court's intervention in a proceeding pending in a trial court: “That a non-final order puts the parties to the expense of a trial that an appeals court may later determine to have been unnecessary is not a proper ground for the grant of a petition for writ of common law certiorari. Every order denying a motion to dismiss is of this nature.” Naghtin v. Jones, 680 So.2d 573, 576 (Fla. 1st DCA 1996). See Leibman v. Sportatorium, Inc., 374 So.2d 1124, 1124 (Fla. 4th DCA 1979) (that petitioner might have to go through an unnecessary trial did not constitute material injury of an irreparable nature warranting grant of an extraordinary writ); Siegel v. Abramowitz, 309 So.2d 234, 235 (Fla. 4th DCA 1975) (facts that petitioner would have to go through trial under the burden of the order complained of, would incur substantial expenses for experts and that, after all that, case might need to be retried held insufficient to show irreparable harm).

No appeal was taken from the denial of the petitioners' motion to dismiss the amended complaint, nor could any appeal have been taken from that interlocutory ruling: With exceptions not pertinent here, see Fla. R.App. P. 9.130(c), a “defendant cannot appeal a nonfinal order which denies a motion to dismiss ... Fla. R.App. P. 9.130(a).” Pub. Health Trust of Dade Cnty. v. Diaz, 529 So.2d 682, 684 (Fla.1988). Instead, the defendants below instituted the present prohibition proceeding here in an effort to stymie further proceedings in the circuit court.

Prohibition is the extraordinary (or prerogative) writ a court issues in order to prevent an inferior court (or other inferior tribunal) from exercising jurisdiction over matters that lie outside the lower tribunal's jurisdiction. See English, 348 So.2d at 296. Only where a tribunal purports to exercise jurisdiction over a case falling within a class of cases it is forbidden to consider is it appropriate for a higher court to grant the extraordinary writ of prohibition. As long as a lower court has subject matter jurisdiction, defined as “the power of the court to deal with the class of cases to which the particular case belongs,” Lovett v. Lovett, 93 Fla. 611, 112 So. 768, 775 (1927), proceedings should be permitted to run their course there, with resort to appeal after the lower court proceedings conclude, if necessary to correct judicial error.²

Prohibition lies to redress an inferior tribunal's usurpation of jurisdiction, but it does not lie to prevent mere error in the exercise of the inferior tribunal's jurisdiction. See English, 348 So.2d at 298. Prohibition is unavailable to divest a lower tribunal of jurisdiction to hear and determine its own jurisdiction, or to test the correctness of a jurisdictional determination that depends on fact finding the lower tribunal is charged with making. See Mandico, 605 So.2d at 854. The writ is narrow in scope, is to be employed with great caution, and, our supreme court has even said, is to be utilized only in “emergencies.” See English, 348 So.2d at 296. There is no emergency here.

The trial court has been asked to construe the Florida Constitution, not the constitution of any other state. But analogous questions have arisen under the constitutions of other states, and the majority rule is that educational adequacy provisions in state constitutions are judicially enforceable. The court in Committee for Educational Rights v. Edgar, 174 Ill.2d 1, 220 Ill.Dec. 166, 672 N.E.2d 1178 (1996), cited in the dissenting opinion, recognizes that the contrary view, viz., that such questions are nonjusticiable, is a minority view:

We are well aware that courts in other jurisdictions have seen fit to define the contours of a constitutionally guaranteed education and to establish judicial standards of educational quality reflecting varying degrees of specificity and deference to the other branches of government. See, e.g., Campbell County School District v. State, 907 P.2d 1238, 1265 (Wyo.1995); Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc. v. State, 86 N.Y.2d 307, 317–19, 655 N.E.2d 661, 666–76, 631 N.Y.S.2d 565, 570–71 (1995); Claremont School District v. Governor, 138 N.H. 183, 192, 635 A.2d 1375, 1381 (1993); McDuffy v. Secretary of the Executive Office of Education, 415 Mass. 545, 606, 615 N.E.2d 516, 548 (1993); Tennessee Small School Systems v. McWherter, 851 S.W.2d 139, 147–48 (Tenn.1993) (dicta); Abbott v. Burke, 119 N.J. 287, 303–04, 575 A.2d 359, 367 (1990); Rose v. Council for Better Education, Inc., 790 S.W.2d 186, 208–09 (Ky.1989); Pauley v. Kelly, 162 W.Va. 672, 705–06, 255 S.E.2d 859, 874 (1979);...