Students Sue for a Civics Education

constitutional responsibility to prepare students to be good citizens. Their real aim goes far beyond the federal courts in Rhode Island to the Supreme Court of the United States and a forty five year old ruling joining me is Casey Johnson, professor at Brooklyn College. Casey tell us a little more

about the lawsuit, all right. This is a lawsuit that was filed in late November against basically the political leadership of Rhode Island and the state Board of Education, arguing that the State of Rhode Island had failed public school students as a whole, and in particular horror students and students of color, by failing to provide them a sufficient education in civics, basic understanding of American government of state government.

How politics and public policy operated, and the lawsuits sites a variety of statistics and surveys suggesting that really appallingly low percentages of public school students no basic understanding of data about how the American government operates and how our

system operates. And their argument, which is which is a stretch, is that this failure by the state violates the constitutional right to do process of these students because the state is failing to train them as sufficient citizens and as

prospective in particular jurors and voters. How many states hold there are local schools accountable for teaching civics and where is the line between what's acceptable and what's not right That it's a great question, and it's something that has has shifted a lot in the last twenty five or thirty years. So if you went back, say to the nineteen sixties or nineteen seventies, civics instruction was a pretty common element of most public school curriculum around the country.

It has essentially evaporated at the high school level in the last two generations, along with geography, which is a related field which also gets cited in the lawsuit. And the sense is that this is kind of boring material and that students already know this material and we need to broaden their curricular reach. So the lawsuit is correct in its argument that relatively few states are requiring this and relatively few students are actually encountering enriched civics education.

The lead lawyer in the case argued a similar argument against the State of New York, but there he argued under state law in the state constitution and in a very sort of different framework than the Rhode Island lawsuits. The lawyers in this case are already talking about the Supreme in this case possibly going to the Supreme Court. So to give some context, tell us about the case of San Antonio v. Rodriguez from forty five years ago. All right, so this is a night in early nineteen seventies.

Case has designed in nineteen seventy three, and it dealt with an issue which which on paper is tangential to the issue that's before before this lawsuit, and a dealt

with the question of unequal funding in public schools. Public schools, for the most part in the United States are funded through property taxes, and so you know, if you're from a rich community, the school the schools are getting more than if you're coming from a poor community, and the plaintiffs in the San Antonio case argued that this disparity in funding led to such a disparity in the quality of the education that their rights as citizens perspective citizens

and their fundamental right to education was violated, and the court ruled five to four basically that they could put this question. The majority in the rodrique As case said that even if we assume there's a fundamental right to equality education, and they're not quite willing to assume that that's simply because these schools had disparate levels of funding doesn't mean that the kids who went to the poorer schools,

we're not getting a sufficiently quality education. So what this law student tries to do is to say, look, we're going to document in this one area civics education, that these students from poorer schools are in fact not getting

equality education. Because I think everyone would agree that in an ideal world, public school students would understand basic civics And because we can document that these students aren't getting equality education, the court should go back, we visit the Rodriquez president and say that courts can dictate two states that they have to provide a sufficient level, minimum level of quality to all students. So this is this case is really an uphill battle. It's a upsift battle, would

be an understatement. Um, they're trying to think of what's worse than an upfield battle in a legal case, right, because you know the seventy three decision is a five forward decision with with the descent written by Justice Marshall. Um. You know, this is a much much more conservative court that we now have. So you would have to imagine Justice Kavanaugh, Chief Justice Roberts adopting the thinking of Justice Marshall and descent and applying it to a majority, which

you know, which is difficult to do. That's set. Lawsuits often have multiple purposes, right, and so one purpose is to try to get this to the Supreme Court and try to force the Supreme Court to address this issue. Before it does that, it would have to go through the First Circuit, which is a much more liberal court. And there certainly are judges on the First Circuit that I could see as somewhat sympathetic to this to this viewpoint.

But even if they lose in court, you know, part of the goal here seems to be a to shame the leadership of the state of Rhode Island to actually, you know, begin to address these questions and be to try to educate the public that issues that most people just assume are being taught in the public schools are

in fact not being taught. And to the extent that you know that we're discussing this this case now, they are accomplishing at least that educational goal with the lawsuit, even if the litigation itself remains Yeah, very very much a long shot. Thanks so much. It is a fascinating lawsuit and an important issue. That's Casey Johnson. He's a professor at Brooklyn College. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg

Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg. Ye