— by Lin McNulty —
The Washington Constitution imposes only one “paramount duty” upon the State: “to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex.” (WASH. CONST. art. IX, § 1.) So begins the Washington Supreme Court unanimous ruling released today regarding MATHEW & STEPHANIE McCLEARY, et al., v. STATE OF WASHINGTON (McCleary Decision).
“Accordingly,” the ruling continues, “this court must take immediate action to enforce its orders. Effective today, the court imposes a $100,000 per day penalty on the State for each day it remains in violation of this court’s order of January 9, 2014.”
Oral arguments in McCleary, et al v. State (Whether the State has met its duty under article IX, section I of the Washington State Constitution to make ample provision for the education of all children within its borders) were originally presented to the Court on June 28, 2011.
The Court has repeatedly ordered the State to provide its plan to fully comply with article IX, section 1 by the 2018 deadline. Because the State has repeatedly failed to do so, offering various explanations as to why, the Court found the State in contempt of court last fall, but held in abeyance the matter of sanctions until the completion of the 2015 legislative session. After the close of that session and following multiple special sessions, the Court finds “the State still has offered no plan for achieving full constitutional compliance by the deadline the legislature itself adopted.”
Governor Inslee’s office and State Legislature leaders scrambled today to take action on this penalty, and to look at calling another special session. Governor Inslee released a statement earlier today:
Today’s order from the Supreme Court acknowledges that significant progress has been made toward meeting the state’s obligation to adequately fund basic education. But everyone understood that even with those historic investments in education, our work would not be done.
The court today made it clear that bolder and more aggressive action is needed to support Washington’s students and their teachers. The detailed plan the court demands in order to fulfill our constitutional obligation will be more complex and expensive than the significant steps we’ve already taken.
I will talk today with Attorney General Ferguson, legislative leaders and others to fully analyze today’s court order.
This penalty may be abated in part if a special session is called and results in achieving full compliance.
As of press time, Senator Kevin Ranker was not available for comment.
Unfortunately $100000 per day is very little incentive for our legislature to act. A mere 3 million dollars a month in a budget that consumed nearly that in legislative and administrative pay raises authorized last session. I applaud the Supreme Court for having the tenacity to continue to hold the Legislatures feet to the fire, but after so many years of failure on the part of the legislature it is going to take much broader action to force their hand.
The Mc Cleary ruling was one of the most broad- and specific challenges of judicial power over the other branches of government and this is the first step of the courts in taking enforcement action. Rather than having the Governer and Legislators huddling with the AG over what to do about the fine, perhaps they should consider actually doing what they have been ordered to do – years ago! Any of us common folk would have been held in contempt and jailed long long ago.
Here is what I do not understand: Maybe somebody can explain who is going to be paying the $100K/day, and who is going to receive it?
Thea, the sanction will be placed in a special account to be used for education funding.
Thea,
The full answer to your question is that you will be paying the fine. This fine wI’ll end up blurred in with a budget line item in the next budget- which is why it is essentially an ineffective sanction against the legislature.
The court has the power to make this more impactful but has taken this as the first step. Should the legislature not meet the McCleary requirements the Judicial branch could (and I would argue should) force a constitutional show-down by implimenting an educational budget that it feels appropriate – forcing the Legislature to craft its budget around the court imposed line items.
This would be an unprecedented action by the court- but so is having an entire legislative branch failing so badly to comply with a judicial order that it has been in contempt of court for over 2 years.
Correction: the legislature has only been in contempt for 1 year. My apologies to those legislators that have only been criminals for 1 year and not 2.
Perhaps the fine should have been applied directly to the salaries of the legislators and the Governor.
Perhaps we should do away with the idiotic and useless testing imposed on our children – that is when schools seemed to start going broke – and try giving them a broad and somewhat useful and related to Real Life education again?