People ex rel. Leighty v. Young

• Decision Date: 20 June 1923
• Docket Number: No. 15230.,15230.
• Citation: 309 Ill. 27,139 N.E. 894
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. LEIGHTY v. YOUNG et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

309 Ill. 27

139 N.E. 894

PEOPLE ex rel. LEIGHTY

v.YOUNG et al.

No. 15230.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June 20, 1923.

Quo warranto by the People, on the relation of Ralph Leighty, against Marion Young and others to test the validity of the organization of a community high school district. From a decree for respondents, relator appeals.

Reversed and remanded, with directions.

Thompson, Dunn, and Duncan, JJ., dissenting.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Fulton County; Walter C. Frank, judge.

Edward J. Brundage, Atty. Gen., and Flack, Flack & Kerman, of Macomb, for appellant.

Harvey H. Atherton and Glenn Ratcliff, both of Lewistown, for appellees.

CARTWRIGHT, J.

The Attorney General presented to the circuit court of Fulton county a petition for leave to file an information in the nature of quo warranto in the name of the people of the state of Illinois, on the relation of Ralph Leighty, to test the validity of the organization of community high school district No. 281 in the counties of Fulton, Schuyler, and McDonough. Leave was denied and an appeal to this court was prosecuted. The judgment was reversed and the cause remanded, and an opinion was filed declaring the law in respect to the questions presented by the petition. It was held that the validating act of 1921 (Laws 1921, p. 797) cured alleged defects in the methods by which the district was organized, and therefore the petition presented no reason for filing an information on account of such alleged defects. The command of the Constitution to the Legislature to ‘provide a thorough and efficient system of free schools, whereby all children of this state may receive a good common school education’ (Const. art. 8, § 1), was construed, and it was held that the Legislature would have no authority to create a school district which was not sufficiently compact to enable the children to reach the school conveniently, and it necessarily followed that it had no authority to legalize the organization of a district by curative act which it could not have authorized in the first instance. The petition alleged that the district did not meet the requirement of the Constitution so as to enable all children within its territory to receive its benefits. It was held that the territory embraced within a community high school district must be sufficiently compact so all children residing in the district of high school age may conveniently travel from their homes to the school building in the time allotted them for travel before school opens in the morning; that the charge in the petition required the court to give leave to file the information; and that the question of fact could only be determined by proper pleadingand proof. People v. Young, 301 Ill. 67, 133 N. E. 693. The cause was reinstated in the circuit court and leave was given to file the information. Two of the defendants whose terms of office had expired disclaimed, and their successors in office, with the other defendants, filed a plea of justification, setting out the organization of the district and alleging that it consisted of compact and contiguous territory within the meaning of the laws of this state. The cause was heard by the court at the May term, 1922, and taken under advisement. On October 21, 1922, a judgment was entered finding the defendants not guilty and dismissing the information with costs. A second appeal to this court was prosecuted.

Where a cause is brought to this court and considered, its judgment as to all the points and questions presented and decided will forever conclude the parties, and if the cause is again brought before the court for review such questions cannot be reconsidered and they will not be open for discussion. Cases cannot be brought to this court and considered in fragments, and the court does not revise, review, or change its decisions except in accordance with the rules and practice, which only permit such review upon a petition for rehearing. On the former appeal a petition for rehearing was presented and denied, and the law, including the construction of the command of the Constitution that a school district shall be of such a character that all children within the district may have the benefit of the school and receive a good common school education, was settled and finally determined. Hollowbush v. McConnel, 12 Ill. 203;Rising v. Carr, 70 Ill. 596;Smith v. Brittenham, 94 Ill. 624;Hough v. Harvey, 84 Ill. 308;Moshier v. Norton, 100 Ill. 63;Newberry v. Blatchford, 106 Ill. 584;Tucker v. People, 122 Ill. 583, 13 N. E. 809;Smyth v. Neff, 123 Ill. 310, 17 N. E. 702;Chicago Theological Seminary v. People, 189 Ill. 439, 59 N. E. 977;City of Chicago v. Lord, 279 Ill. 167, 116 N. E. 630;People v. Drainage Com'rs, 282 Ill. 514, 118 N. E. 742; 2 R. C. L. 223. The lucid, explicit, and intelligible exposition of the mandate of the Constitution, and the decision that the Legislature has no power to create a school district not sufficiently compact to enable the children to reach the school conveniently so that all the children of the district may attend the school and obtain thereby a good common school education, are the law of this case, and the only question left to the circuit court or now to be considered is whether the territory of this district is of that character.

The district is 10 miles east and west and 10 miles north and south, and there are portions of the district 8 or 10 miles distant from Vermont, where the school is located. The question whether the district satisfies the mandate of the Constitution will be best understood from the following plat:

Image 1 (2.59" X 2.65") Available for Offline Print

In determining whether the territory which was organized as community high school district No. 281 comes within the requirement of the Constitution that it shall afford to all the children of the district a reasonable opportunity to receive a good common school education, that requirement and the meaning of the terms ‘community,’ ‘compact,’ and ‘contiguous,’ when applied to school districts, are to be considered. Observing the law as settled on the former appeal that the school is for the people and not the people for the school, and therefore a community high school is a school for a community and not a changing of separate and diverse communities into a school community, this district extends far beyond any fair or reasonable definition of a community. Section 89a of the School Law (Hurd's Rev. St. 1921, c. 122), under which the organization was attempted, required that the territory should be compact and contiguous. The curative act omitted the word ‘compact’ but required that the territory should be contiguous. Any discussion of the difference between these terms, when considered in connection with the constitutional requirement, brings no results. The Constitution is the supreme law, and the Legislature could not, if it saw fit, set aside that law and provide that a district could be organized which would not meet its requirements. The Legislature may add further conditions or limitations in harmony with the Constitution, and in view of the constitutional provision the statutory requirements of compactness or contiguity are such limitations and nothing else. The state of Illinois is compact and its territory contiguous, but when these terms are applied to a school district, surely no one would be found to say that the Constitution was satisfied if those limitations, only, were observed. Both the terms meant unity of the territory for the purpose of a community high school district, and required that the territory should be compact for that purpose and there should be no intervening territory. The omission of the word ‘compact’ in the curative act is of no consequence whatever and cannot serve to abrogate the Constitution.

The constitutional provision is a mandate to the Legislature and a limitation on the exercise of the power. Russell v. High School Board of Education, 212 Ill. 327, 72 N. E. 441. The mandate is to provide a thorough and efficient system of schools, and the limitations are that they shall be free to all children of the state and such that all the children may receive a good common school education. Whether such schools shall be provided is not left to the discretion of the Legislature. In order that any comparison can be made concerning rules of law or decisions of the court applicable to certain conditions, there must be a fair resemblance between...