Executive Summary
Current Status: Legal Right Recognized and Applied
Relevant State Constitution Provision(s)
- “The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free public schools open to all children in the State and shall establish, organize and support such other public institutions of learning, as may be desirable.” (Art. XI, § 3 of the South Carolina Constitution)
- “No money shall be paid from public funds nor shall the credit of the State or any of its political subdivisions be used for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.” (Art. XI, § 4 of the South Carolina Constitution)
- “The credit of neither the State nor of any of its political subdivisions shall be pledged or loaned for the benefit of any individual, company, association, corporation, or any religious or other private education institution except as permitted by Section 3, Article XI of this Constitution.” (Art. X, § 11 of the South Carolina Constitution)
The South Carolina Supreme Court has recognized and applied a legal right to a minimally adequate education. South Carolina’s public school system has been the subject of litigation for decades. The Court found in 2014 that the State’s funding scheme was unconstitutional, and twice exercised its retained jurisdiction over the case. However, in 2017, the Court vacated its continuing jurisdiction and terminated the case.
The below table summarizes the evolution of Abbeville, which is South Carolina’s leading public school funding case.
|
Case |
Key Information |
|
335 S.C. 58 (1999) |
Date: April 22, 1999 Topic(s): Equality; Adequacy Decision: (1) Held that Art. XI, § 3 required the State to provide a “minimally adequate education”; (2) Rejected Plaintiffs’ state and federal equal protection claims. The Court remanded for trial. |
|
410 S.C. 619 (2014) |
Date: November 12, 2014 Topic(s): Adequacy Decision: Held that the State was not providing a minimally adequate education. Affirmed the district court’s opinion as modified, affirming the trial court’s decision mandating early childhood education but substantially modifying the part of that decision dismissing plaintiffs’ claims concerning K-12 “input” quality. |
|
September 24, 2015, Interim Order 414 S.C. 166 (2015) |
Date: September 24, 2015 Topic(s): Adequacy Decision: Remedial decision, provided a more concrete timeline for addressing the constitutional violations, including ordering the creation of a three-person expert panel. |
|
November 5, 2015, Interim Order 415 S.C. 19 (2015) |
Date: November 5, 2015 Topic(s): Adequacy Decision: The Court superseded the September 24, 2015, order. This order omitted the expert panel, but retained the mandates that the Defendants submit a summary of their efforts for the Court’s review. |
|
No. 2007-065159 (S.C., Nov. 17, 2017) |
Date: November 17, 2017 Topic(s): Adequacy Decision: Vacated continuing jurisdiction and terminated the case, primarily on separation-of-powers grounds. |
Historical Background
The four cases consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court desegregation decision in 1954, included South Carolina’s original Briggs v. Elliott suit.
In 1988, the South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed a circuit court’s dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state’s public school funding system in Richland County v. Campbell, 364 S.E.2d 470. That case claimed the system was inequitable based on major disparities in per-pupil spending between high- and low-wealth school districts.
Abbeville v. State
Despite this precedent, in 1993, 40 of South Carolina’s 91 school districts sued the State, alleging that the education finance system violated the state and federal constitutions and a state funding statute. While the trial court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss all the plaintiff district’s claims, the South Carolina Supreme Court, in Abbeville County School District v. State, 515 S.E.2d 535 (S.C. 1999) (Abbeville I), distinguished its earlier Richland County decision, revived plaintiffs’ “adequacy” claim based on the South Carolina education clause, and remanded the case for trial.
The Court also held that the education clause “requires the General Assembly to provide the opportunity for each child to receive a minimally adequate education” and defined that education to include providing students adequate and safe facilities in which they have the opportunity to acquire:
- the ability to read, write, and speak the English language, and knowledge of mathematics and physical science;
- a fundamental knowledge of economic, social, and political systems, and of history and governmental processes; and
- academic and vocational skills.
Abbeville Trial
During a 102-day trial, plaintiffs’ witnesses described difficulties districts and schools face, including:
- devastating teacher turnover due to low salaries and meager benefits
- uncertified teachers
- buildings in shoddy condition
- lack of equipment
- overcrowding
- growing numbers of ELL students
- students from poverty backgrounds, and
- graduation rates that vary between 33% and 57%.
Plaintiffs, represented by Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, also presented witnesses who testified about educational programs, such as high-quality preschool, quality teaching, and early literacy interventions, which have proven track records of success and would, plaintiffs contend, greatly improve student outcomes––if the districts had adequate funding to provide them.
Defendants argued that students in these poor districts are making the same steady progress as students in other parts of the state and urged the court to reject plaintiffs’ allegations. Counsel for the state defendants argued that although the state has set academic goals for students, those goals exceed what the state is required to fund, which is only a “minimally adequate” education.
Trial Court Decision
In December 2005, the trial court found for defendants on plaintiffs’ claims that inadequate teaching quality and inadequate facilities deprived students the opportunity to acquire a minimally adequate education (Abbeville Cnty. Sch. Dist v. State). The court concluded that inputs into the educational system were sufficient to create opportunity for a minimally adequate education. However, in the same decision, Judge Thomas W. Cooper, Jr. held that poverty directly causes lower student achievement and that the state constitution imposes an obligation on the state “to create an educational system that overcomes . . . the effects of poverty.” Relying on evidence presented relating standardized test scores to free and reduced lunch status, the court described a “debilitating and destructive cycle” of poverty and poor academic achievement for low-income students “until some outside agency or force interrupts the sequence.” Based on expert testimony from both plaintiff and defendant witnesses, the court concluded that “it is essential to address the impact of poverty as early as possible in the lives of the children affected by it.” Therefore, the court ordered “early childhood intervention at the pre-kindergarten level and continuing through at least grade three” to minimize “the impact and the effect of poverty on the educational abilities and achievements” of children from backgrounds of poverty.
The case was appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court in 2008. Both sides sought to overturn the aspects of the decision that held against their positions. In June, 2012, after almost four years, the Court issued an order instructing the parties to re-argue the case in September and invited the parties to submit briefs explaining how legislation passed since 2005, including a series of funding reductions, may have affected the legal issues in the case. Defendants’ Abbeville Brief June 2012 and Plaintiffs’ Abbeville Brief 2012.
State Supreme Court Decision: Abbeville II
More than six years after oral argument had been held regarding the lower court’s decision based on a trial that concluded in 2004, on November 12, 2014, South Carolina Supreme Court upheld that part of the trial court’s decision that mandated early childhood education for students from poverty backgrounds; it also substantially modified in plaintiffs’ favor that part of the trial judge’s decision that dismissed plaintiffs’ claims involving “inputs” for K-12 programs such as teacher quality and, inadequate transportation. Abbeville Cnty. Sch. Dist. v. State of South Carolina (Abbeville II). The decision was written by Chief Justice Toal, who was joined by two other justices; two justices filed a dissenting opinion, arguing that the majority had improperly violated separation of powers precepts.
Although the state legislature had created an early childhood intervention program in response to the 2005 order, the Court dealt with the mootness issue by holding that although many of the facts had changed over the past decade, “the Defendants have not substantially changed the baseline funding mechanisms. Thus, we find the Plaintiff Districts may validly argue that the overall funding scheme continues to disadvantage them in the same fundamental way.” Throughout the decision, the Court cited evidence from both the original trial and from the re-argument the Court had convened in 2012 to consider the current state of affairs.
In regard to transportation, the Court cited examples of elementary school children in the small rural districts travelling more than 4 hours per day to and from school in antiquated buses that frequently broke down. Regarding teacher quality, it specifically held that the trial court’s failure to find a relationship between student achievement and the poor quality of teachers in the plaintiff districts, 38% of whom were uncertified or held substandard certifications, to be “largely erroneous.” The Court also cited output statistics indicating the continued failure of students in the Plaintiff districts to meet state proficiency standards, although the Court also acknowledged that graduation rates had substantially improved. Ultimately, the Court held that “South Carolina’s educational funding scheme is a fractured formula denying students in the Plaintiff Districts the constitutionally required opportunity.” Abbeville Cnty. Sch. Dist. v. State of South Carolina.
The Court’s remedy order was innovative. It deferred to the legislature’s policy making prerogatives to develop specific solutions to the problems it had identified, but it discussed in some detail as “particularly instructive” the remedies courts in New York and Wyoming had developed in similar circumstances. In both cases, CFE v. State of New York and Campbell Cnty. Sch. District v. State of Wyoming, the courts had emphasized the importance of cost studies as part of the remedy. The Court also indicated that the defendants and the small rural plaintiff districts must consider the benefits of consolidation to cut administrative costs. The parties were directed to reappear before the Court “within a reasonable time” to present a plan to address the constitutional violations, and it gave “leave to the parties to suggest to the Court precisely how to proceed… [and to suggest] specific, planned remedial measures.”
Implementation and Judicial Intervention Following Abbeville II
Jay Lucas, the then-newly-elected Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives, responded to the court order by establishing a bi-partisan task force composed of legislators, business representatives and educators from the trial and plaintiff districts to devise a solution.
On September 24, 2015, in response to a motion filed by the plaintiffs, the Court released an interim order requiring that the parties set up a three-person expert panel to analyze potential solutions for the problems highlighted in the Court’s decision and to review and advise the Court on the defendants’ plan for ameliorating these problems. The Court ordered that a copy of the defendants’ plan and expert panel analysis be submitted by March 2016. However, on November 5, 2015, the Court entered an order superseding its September 24, 2015, order. This order omitted the expert panel but retained the requirement that defendants’ advise the Court of their plans.
The legislature submitted a joint legislative report to the Court on June 29, 2016. In the report, the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate listed several hundred million dollars in increased appropriations the legislature adopted during the session, including a number of categorical programs aimed at high poverty districts and a number of bills aimed at restructuring aspects of the administration of the education system.
Plaintiffs submitted a reply in late July that stated that most of the new appropriations were state-wide increases that benefitted all school districts and from which the plaintiff districts would receive only a small share and that the other reforms constituted scattered items that nowhere compared to 19 pages of specific reforms recommended by the House Task Force. On September 20, 2016, the Court issued an Order that praised the work and detailed recommendations of the House Task Force, noted that the legislature had enacted four bills in the last session that incorporated some of the Task Force’s recommendations as well as other reforms, commended the legislature on their work to date, but rejected the defendants’ call for the Court to end its jurisdiction. The Court ordered the parties to submit further reports on progress toward resolving the issues the Court had identified in Abbeville II by June 30, 2017.
In June 2017, defendants submitted updated progress reports and again requested that the Court end its jurisdiction. In November 2017, the South Carolina Supreme Court reversed course and terminated its jurisdiction of the case, holding that the Court’s previous decision “was wrongly decided as violative of separation of powers.” Abbeville Cnty. Sch. Dist. v. State. The vote was 3-2, with the two dissenters issuing a strongly-worded opinion that stated that: “Unfortunately, our Court has lost the will to do even the minimal amount necessary to avoid becoming complicit actors in the deprivation of a minimally adequate education to South Carolina’s students.”
The majority’s brief opinion stated that the General Assembly had responded in good faith to the Court’s mandate by adopting “numerous legislative initiatives, as well as increased funding for students.” The dissenters would have maintained jurisdiction over the case until the defendants completed a thorough study of the current education funding formula and had identified the fruits of their labors to the court.
In 2019, the Governor, President of the Senate, and Speaker of the House requested that the state Revenue and Fiscal Affairs office create a new funding formula. From 2019 to 2020, there were significant efforts to enact education reform legislation. The legislation received extensive opposition from teachers and ultimately expired during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, the state legislature adopted a version of the 2019 funding formula, known as State Aid to Classrooms, under proviso 1.3. This funding formula is weighted to provide additional support for English language learners and students in poverty.