What do you do if you're a public school parent who is fed up with the inferior quality of education your children are receiving?
How do you deal with budget cuts that are crippling the system and forcing teachers to beg for essential supplies? If you're a public school parent in Florida, you sue the state.
The Florida Supreme Court made history by holding that citizen-plaintiffs had stated a claim worth pursuing at trial, namely, that the Florida Legislature is violating its "paramount duty" to provide and fund a "high quality" system of free public schools, as required by the state Constitution.
The lawsuit promises to be instructive on several fronts.
First, Florida's "paramount duty" to provide a "high quality" public education for its children sets one of the highest standards for state support of public schools in the nation. Georgia's constitution requires the provision of an "adequate" education.
The lawsuit also calls into question the crucial issue of whether public school education represents a fundamental right, like free speech. If not, what is the state's legal duty to educate its children?
The answers to these questions are of great interest to many disaffected Floridian parents of public school students.
These issues were previously litigated. In the 1973 case of San Antonio Independent School District vs. Rodriguez, the U.S. Supreme Court held that education is not a fundamental right and the Equal Protection Clause does not require absolute equality in school funding or prohibit "rational" disparities in educational funding.
Part of what is driving the Florida suit is that the state's share of education funding has dropped from nearly 62 percent to about 44 percent, as lawmakers have shifted the responsibility for funding public schools to local communities through property taxes.
This has made it virtually impossible for poor school districts to provide a "high quality" education. Even wealthy school districts are balking at their ever-increasing funding burden.
How can an uneducated populace properly exercise fundamental rights, such as First Amendment freedoms or the right to vote?
The rights seem inexorably linked.
To borrow a metaphor from Sarah Palin, Florida's Mama and Papa Gators and other public school parents are testing the legal waters again to ensure our children receive an adequate public education.
Many argue our kids deserve at least that much.