Law Commons^™

The New Gender Panic In Sport: Why State Laws Banning Transgender Athletes Are Unconstitutional, Deborah Brake

Articles

The scope and pace of legislative activity targeting transgender individuals is nothing short of a gender panic. From restrictions on medical care to the regulation of library books and the use of pronouns in schools, attacks on the transgender community have reached crisis proportions. A growing number of families with transgender children are being forced to leave their states of residence to keep their children healthy and their families safe and intact. The breadth and pace of these developments is striking. Although the anti-transgender backlash now extends broadly into health and family governance, sport was one of the first settings—the …

Just Extracurriculars?, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Extracurricular activities have been the battleground for a striking number of Supreme Court cases set at public schools, from cases involving speech to religion to drug testing. Indeed, the two most recent Supreme Court cases involving constitutional rights at public schools--Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) and Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. (2021)--both arose in the extracurricular context of school sports. Even so, the Supreme Court has never fully clarified the status of extracurricular activities themselves. Once a school offers an extracurricular activity, is participation merely a privilege? Does the fact that extracurricular activities are voluntary for students affect …

The Public Right To Education, Matthew P. Shaw

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Public education is "the most important function of state and local government" and yet not a "fundamental right or liberty." This Article engages one of constitutional law's most intractable problems by introducing "the public right to education" as a doctrinal pathway to a constitutional right to education process in three steps. First, it identifies that the otherwise right-to-education foreclosing case, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, only contemplated education as a fundamental right or liberty interest. Second, by identifying public education as a due process protected property interest, this Article presents a viable pathway for circumventing Rodriguez. Third, mindful …

Special Solicitude: Religious Freedom At America’S Public Universities, William E. Thro

Office of Legal Counsel Academic Publications

Rejecting the Obama Administration’s argument that the First Amendment requires identical treatment for religious organizations and secular organizations, the Supreme Court held such a “result is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.” (Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U.S. at 189). This “special solicitude” guarantees religious freedom from the government in all aspects of society, but particularly on public university campuses. At a minimum, religious expression and religious organizations must have equal rights with secular expression and secular organizations. In some instances, religious expression and religious expression …

Removing Police From Schools Using State Law Heightened Scrutiny, Christina Payne-Tsoupros

Journal Articles

This Article argues that school police, often called school resource officers, interfere with the state law right to education and proposes using the constitutional right to education under state law as a mechanism to remove police from schools. Disparities in school discipline for Black and brown children are well-known. After discussing the legal structures of school policing, this Article uses the Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) theoretical framework developed by Subini Annamma, David Connor, and Beth Ferri to explain why police are unacceptable in schools. Operating under the premise that school police are unacceptable, this Article then analyzes mechanisms to …

Pursuing Diversity: From Education To Employment, Amy L. Wax

All Faculty Scholarship

A central pillar of the Supreme Court’s educational affirmative-action jurisprudence is that the pedagogical benefits of being educated with students from diverse backgrounds are sufficiently “compelling” to justify some degree of race-conscious selection in university admissions.

This essay argues that the blanket permission to advance educational diversity, defensible or not, should not be extended to employment. The purpose of the workplace is not pedagogical. Rather, employees are hired and paid to do a job, deliver a service, produce a product, and complete specified tasks efficiently and effectively. Whether race-conscious practices for the purpose of creating a more diverse workforce will …

Mccleary V. State And The Washington State Supreme Court's Retention Of Jurisdiction—A Success Story For Washington Public Schools?, Jessica R. Burns

Seattle University Law Review SUpra

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amicus Curiae Children’S Law Clinic At Duke Law School Advocates For Children’S Services Of Legal Aid Of North Carolina Public Schools First Nc, Jane R. Wettach, Peggy Nicholson, K. Ricky Watson Jr., Celia Pistolis, Aisha Forte, Jennifer Story, Kevin Zhao

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Fight For Equal Protection: Reconstruction-Redemption Redux, Kermit Roosevelt Iii, Patricia Stottlemyer

All Faculty Scholarship

With Justice Scalia gone, and Justices Ginsburg and Kennedy in their late seventies, there is the possibility of significant movement on the Supreme Court in the next several years. A two-justice shift could upend almost any area of constitutional law, but the possible movement in race-based equal protection jurisprudence provides a particularly revealing window into the larger trends at work. In the battle over equal protection, two strongly opposed visions of the Constitution contend against each other, and a change in the Court’s composition may determine the outcome of that struggle. In this essay, we set out the current state …

A Benign Prior Restraint Rule For Public School Classroom Speech, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article is a contribution to a symposium on schools and free speech. It advances the claim that the First Amendment doctrines that apply to the classroom should adopt a benign prior restraint rule. In the case of teacher classroom speech, the Garcetti rule should apply where the government’s action in interfering with the speech constitutes a prior restraint—the First Amendment should not reach such interference. In cases where a teacher first speaks and then is later punished for that speech, however, basic notions of due process and the dangers of arbitrary governmental decision making are far more pressing, and …

Student Press Exceptionalism, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

Constitutional protection for student speakers is an issue that has been hotly contested for almost 50 years. Several commentators have made powerful arguments that theCourt has failed to sufficiently protect the First Amendment rights of all students. But this debate has overlooked an even more troubling reality about the current state ofexpressive protection for student — the especially harmful effect of the Court’s precedents on student journalists. Under the Court’s jurisprudence, schools may regulate with far greater breadth and ease the speech of student journalists than of their non-press classmates. Schools are essentially free to censor the student press even …

Beyond The Schoolhouse Gates: The Unprecedented Expansion Of School Surveillance Authority Under Cyberbulling Laws, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

For several years, states have grappled with the problem of cyberbullying and its sometimes devastating effects. Because cyberbullying often occurs between students, most states have understandably looked to schools to help address the problem. To that end, schools in forty-six states have the authority to intervene when students engage in cyberbullying. This solution seems all to the good unless a close examination of the cyberbullying laws and their implications is made. This Article explores some of the problematic implications of the cyberbullying laws. More specifically, it focuses on how the cyberbullying laws allow schools unprecedented surveillance authority over students. This …

A Common Law Constitutionalism For The Right To Education, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article makes two claims, one descriptive and the other normative. The descriptive claim is that individual rights to education have not been realized under state constitutions because the currently dominant structure of education reform litigation prevents such realization. In state constitutional education clause claims, both pleadings and adjudication generally focus on the equality or adequacy of the system as a whole, rather than on any particular student's educational resources or attainment. The Article traces the roots of the currently dominant systemic approach, and finds these roots in federal institutional reform litigation. This systemic focus leads to a systemic, rather …

Universities As Constitutional Law Makers (And Other Hidden Actors In Our Constitutional Orders), Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

In the stories told by opinion makers and many law professors, American constitutional law is concerned with two things-individual rights and the powers of government-and it is settled by the Court, which was established by Article III of our national Constitution. In those now-familiar tales, the United States Supreme Court creates constitutional law when heroic individuals assert their fundamental rights against an overreaching state and when Congress, state legislatures, and executive agencies are called upon to justify their expert enactments to an overreaching judiciary. To settle these constitutional disputes the Court looks either to the text of the written Constitution …

Freedom From Ignorance: The International Duty To Provide Public Education, Areto A. Imoukhuede

Faculty Scholarship

This paper argues that public education is an international human right that the U.S. ought to recognise and protect. Recognising a right to public education would correct a major inconsistency in U.S. law by bringing education rights docrtine more in line with international human rights law. This piece discusses how current U.S. education rights doctrine is inconsistent with U.S. tradition and legal precedent. It then demonstrates how international law recognises public education as a fundamental duty of government before arguing for why the U.S. is obligated to follow international law regarding the right to public education.

The Education Duty, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

A constitution is an instrument of entrustment. By adopting a democratic constitution, a polity places in the hands of its elected representatives its trust that those representatives will act to pursue the ends of the polity, rather than their own ends, and that they will do so with an eye toward the effects of adopted policies. In effect, the polity entrusts lawmaking power to its legislature with the expectation that such power will be exercised with loyalty to the public and with due care for its interests. Simply put, legislatures are fiduciaries.

In this Article, I examine the nature of …

American School Finance Litigation And The Right To Education In South Africa, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This paper addresses the South African Constitution's invitation to the Constitutional Court to 'consider foreign law' when interpreting its provisions. Focusing on the education provisions found in section 29 of the Constitution, I make two claims. Firstly, contrary to the developing consensus, American state supreme court jurisprudence in school funding cases makes a poor resource to aid the interpretation of the basic South African right to education, regardless of the quantum of education that the Constitutional Court decides is encompassed by the word 'basic'. Secondly, however, certain aspects of these same American decisions, particularly the space they provide for a …

The Fifth Freedom: The Constitutional Duty To Provide Public Education, Areto Imoukhuede

Faculty Scholarship

“The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance. It means that every[one], everywhere, should be free to develop his [or her] talents to their full potential – unhampered by arbitrary barriers of race or birth or income.” Lyndon B. Johnson This article argues that education is a fundamental human right that the U.S. Supreme Court has failed to recognize because of the Court’s bias towards negative, rather than positive rights. Viewed from the limited perspective of rights as liberties, the concern with declaring a fundamental right to education is that education legislation would be strictly scrutinized, thus causing the undesired result …

Imaginary Threats To Government's Expressive Interests, Helen Norton

Publications

The Supreme Court’s emerging government speech doctrine permits the government to refuse to allow other parties to join, and thus change or distort, its own message. In this way, the government speech doctrine appropriately protects government’s legitimate – and valuable – expressive interests by providing a defense to free speech clause claims by private speakers who seek to compel the government to deliver their own views. Too often, however, governmental bodies are asserting their own expressive interests to claim – and some courts are permitting them to exercise – the power to punish private parties’ speech that does not threaten …

State Constitutions And Individual Rights: Conceptual Convergence In School Finance Litigation, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article begins by reviewing Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld's “fundamental conceptions” and expanding his theory to the arena of state constitutional rights, building on recent work by other scholars. From this foundation, it moves to a discussion of the sources of rights to education. The Article then examines the text of relevant state constitutional provisions, as well as the ever-changing landscape of school finance litigation, the principal vehicle through which litigants assert constitutional claims based on ostensible education rights. Next, it systematically analyzes the population of reported cases from the highest state courts to identify Hohfeldian conceptions of education rights held …

State Constitutional Design And Education Reform: Process Specification In Louisiana, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

As to education, the Louisiana Constitution contains the familiar general mandate for the establishment of a public school system, now ubiquitous among state constitutions. But unlike the founding documents of any of the other states, Louisiana's constitution also provides for a very specific process-based allocation of the responsibilities for determining appropriations levels in education from year to year.

It is well-known that state constitutions often treat numerous—sometimes trivial—subjects, or contain provisions that seem hyper-specific and statutory, rather than foundational and constitutional, and state constitutions have been roundly criticized (and sometimes defended) for these features. In this Article, I argue that …

Not Very Collegial: Exploring Bans On Illegal Immigrant Admissions To State Colleges And Universities, Marcia A. Yablon-Zug, Danielle R. Holley-Walker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Sanctionable Conduct: How The Supreme Court Stealthily Opened The Schoolhouse Gate, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

The Supreme Court's decision in Morse v. Frederick signaled that public school authority over student expression extends beyond the schoolhouse gate. This authority may extend to any activity in which a student participates that the school has officially sanctioned. The author argues that this decision is unsupported by precedent, and could encourage schools to sanction more events in the future. Because the Court failed to limit or define the power of a school to sanction an activity, the decision could have a chilling effect on even protected student expression. The author commends the Court for taking up this issue after …

Introducing The Law Of Nonprofit Organizations And Philanthropy, David A. Brennen

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

On January 5,2007, the Nonprofit and Philanthropy Law Section of AALS held its first program at the AALS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The program, entitled "State-Level Legal Reform of the Law of Nonprofit Organizations," was a fitting way to launch what should prove to be a valuable contribution to the study of law relating to nonprofit organizations and philanthropy. This burgeoning area of academic legal study is well poised to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years due to its impact on many traditional areas of legal study, including tax law, corporate law, estate law, trust law, …

Florida’S Past And Future Roles In Education Finance Reform Litigation, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In federalist parlance, the states often are called laboratories of democracy. Nowhere is this truer than in the field of education, and almost no subset of the education field lends itself to this label more than education finance. Since 1973, with very few notable exceptions, the entire development of the practice of education finance has proceeded through state-specific reforms. These reforms have occurred mostly through legislative policymaking, but the courts have played an important role in directing that policy development.

If one were to seek to observe one of these laboratories in action—to witness the interaction of the courts, the …

Lex-Praxis Of Education Informational Privacy For Public Schoolchildren, Susan P. Stuart

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Local Distinction: State Education Privacy Laws For Public Schoolchildren, Susan P. Stuart

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Academic Freedom After Grutter: Getting Real About The "Four Freedoms" Of A University, J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court's decision in Grutter v. Bollinger represents a high-water mark for the recognition and influence of constitutional academic freedom. The Court there relied, gingerly perhaps, on constitutional academic freedom, understood as some autonomy for university decision making on matters of core academic concern, to provide a compelling interest adequate to uphold flexible racial preferences in university admissions. Now that the dust has settled from direct import of the decision for affirmative action in admissions, it is important to consider what role constitutional academic freedom, as a working constitutional doctrine, should or may play within current disputes about higher …

A Response To Goodwin Liu, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Professor Liu's article convincingly shows that the Fourteenth Amendment can be read, and has been read in the past, to confer a positive right on all citizens to a high-quality public education and to place a correlative duty on the legislative branches of both state and federal government to provide for that education. Specifically, the United States Congress has an obligation under the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause, Liu argues, to ensure that the public education provided by states meets minimal standards so that citizens possess the competencies requisite to meaningful participation in civic life. Liu's argument is not simply that …

Stepping Through Grutter'S Open Doors: What The University Of Michigan Affirmative Action Cases Mean For Race-Conscious Government Decisionmaking, Helen L. Norton

Faculty Scholarship

In Grutter, a majority of the Court for the first time identified an instrumental justification for race-based government decisionmaking as compelling -- specifically, a public law school’s interest in attaining a diverse student body. Grutter not only recognized the value of diversity in higher education, but left open the possibility that the Court might find similar justifications compelling as well. The switch to instrumental justifications for affirmative action appears a strategic response to the Court’s narrowing of the availability of remedial rationales. A number of thoughtful commentators, however, have reacted to this trend with concern and even dismay, questioning whether …