July 31, 2005
Sovereign Immunity saves the progressive agenda ::
politics, legal — No Tags
6:49 pm
So, I realize that I haven’t been posting much over the past week, but the news has been slow and the outside world so interesting that I’ve turned my focus to to doing things rather than writing about it. Also, Jessamyn’s mom was visiting for the past couple of days, and that kept us off the computers as well.
So, to get back into the world of wonky posting. According to yesterday’s Rutland Herald, a Vermont Superior Court tossed out a lawsuit challenging Act 60, the legislation that mandates equalized school funding throughout the state. From the information contained in the article, this case seems to be another fight in the ongoing political battle that started with the Brigham decision, which loosely held that the Vermont Constitution mandated that all Vermont citizens have access to the same educational opportunities, regardless of the economic state in which their families find themselves.
Act 60 was the resulting legislation, which split the state into rich, donor towns and poorer, receiving towns. Money is collected into a central state-wide fund and is paid out based on economic need. It’s a social experiment that harkens back to the New Deal-type egalitarianism that leveled the ecomonic—and educational—playing field and furthered the belief that an individual’s success will be determined by their personal abilities and not by the position into which they happened to be born. For liberals in this state, it’s a wonderful policy that contrasts significantly with the social policies currently stagnating in Conservative-dominated Washington.
The towns who brought their suit—the so-called donor towns—don’t share that view. According to the Herald article, the plaintiffs argued that the legislation was finally mandated in such a way that mandates it be overturned. (The article refers to it as a “poison pill,” whatever that might mean). To use the language of the article, “[t]hey said the education fund is supposed to be used only to make payments to school districts and supervisory unions, cover costs of short-term borrowing in case of cash flow problems and to fund income sensitivity payments.”
What caught my eye was why the court dismissed the suit. The court reasoned that without a specific grant from the legislature, the state was immune from being sued. It’s the abrogation doctrine which (I think) anyone who takes Federal Courts learns about. Once again, the article:
[Judge Cohen stated that] “[i]t is incumbent upon the Towns seeking to maintain an action against the State to establish that the suit is either authorized by statute or that it falls within a recognized exception … (or) at least be expected to present a supportable argument why this court should forge the path in creating a new exception,” Cohen wrote. “Accordingly, because the Towns have not established a basis for this court’s jurisdiction in this matter, the Towns’ complaint is dismissed without prejudice.”
Interesting! Typically, a narrow interpretation of the Abrogration doctrine is the tool of the states rights/Federalist Society crowd, used to stop lawsuits against states that enforce civil rights. But here, it is has been applied in such a way that prevents the court from even addressing the merits of the towns’ suit. An unexpected surprise for those progressives who might be skeptical of the doctrines that require judicial restraint.
[Ed. note: I’d appreciate a copy of the court’s ruling, if anyone might have one.]
