Children Don’t Have Constitutional Right to Switch Schools, Appeals Court Rules
Parents aren’t guaranteed public-school choice in Arkansas case
Aspen School District students head to their buses after the first day of class in Aspen, Colo., last Wednesday. PHOTO: JEREMY WALLACE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Public-school parents don’t have a constitutional right to decide where to send their children to school, an appeals court ruled.
The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday rejected claims by a group of Arkansas parents that they had a right to transfer their kids out of a struggling school district in northeast Arkansas to neighboring districts where they thought the children could be better educated.
School officials rejected the transfer applications because they said the children’s assigned district, which is predominantly African-American, is still subject to a desegregation order from more than 40 years ago. The parents, who are white, sued for violations of due process and equal protection, claiming they had a constitutional right to move their kids. A lower court last year dismissed the parents’ complaint.
In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court in St. Louis agreed with the lower court’s decision, saying the Constitution doesn’t guarantee so-called public-school choice.
Courts have said parents can’t be denied the right to choose to enroll their children in private schools. But those rulings don’t apply to parents seeking to move their kids within the public system, the appeals court said. The opinion, written by Judge Lavenski R. Smith, said there was no precedent that supported the position that “a parent’s ability to choose where his or her child is educated within the public school system is a fundamental right or liberty.”
Jess Askew III, an attorney representing the parents, said the case raised “issues of exceptional importance for families and children across the state of Arkansas,” and they would consider asking for a rehearing by the full court.
“I’m pleased that the district court’s judgment was affirmed,” said George Jay Bequette Jr., an attorney who represented the school district.
The plaintiffs’ children are enrolled in the Blytheville School District in Blytheville, Ark., an impoverished small city in northeast Arkansas. The state has classified the district’s high school and middle school as “academic distressed” based on student performance on standardized tests, and the parents sought to move their kids to two nearby, wealthier districts that they said were “better suited to satisfy [the] children’s educational needs.”
Arkansas passed a law two years ago restricting transfers of students enrolled in districts still subject to desegregation orders. Blytheville officials said it was still subject to a 1971 federal mandate requiring racial balance to remedy past discrimination, and said that, as a policy, no transfers were allowed into or out of the district, regardless of the applicant’s race. This year, an amended law was enacted making it easier for parents to transfer districts in the state.
Lawyers for the parents have argued that Blytheville was no longer governed by the mandate, saying the original judge who approved the desegregation plan declared the matter closed in 1978.
The appeals court didn’t take a position on who was right in that regard, saying there wasn’t a constitutional issue.Children Don’t Have Constitutional Right to Switch Schools, Appeals Court Rules - WSJ:
Write to Jacob Gershman at jacob.gershman@wsj.com