In the late 1960’s, Mexican-American parents in the poor, ninety-six percent minority Edgewood School District became sick of a heartbreaking, frustrating, and seemingly unchangeable fact of their existence: no matter how high Edgewood raised property taxes, it would never have even close to the amount of funding as nearby, richer districts. Just because nearby districts like Alamo Heights had higher property valuations, their schools would always have more money. Even though Edgewood had higher property taxes, it was raising almost half the amount per-pupil of nearby affluent districts. The parents were sick of it. They formed the Edgewood Concerned Parent Association.They formed the Edgewood Concerned Parent Association. Mr. Rodriguez, one of the group’s leaders, sued San Antonio Independent School DIstrict and five other wealthy districts under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. 

 

The court case seemed like it would become the next Brown V Board as the plaintiffs won appeal after appeal. In an era when discrimination based on race was on everyone’s mind, the plaintiffs argued wealth based discrimination was just as bad. If states were allowed to continue providing an inferior education to impoverished students, the cycle of poverty would become nearly impossible to break. Opportunity and success would continue to be birthright for a few, and unreachable for many. Finally, in 1972, The Federal District Court ruled unanimously in the plaintiffs’ favor, finding the state of Texas had failed to establish a compelling reason for a school funding system which created extreme disparities. The State, which had taken over the case from the school districts, appealed to the Supreme Court.

 

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court destroyed the hopes of The Edgewood Concerned Parent Association, and set a pernicious precedent that has lasted to this day. Justice Powell wrote the majority opinion, which overturned all the lower courts decisions. “We cannot say that such disparities are the product of a system that is so irrational as to be invidiously discriminatory,” he said of massive differences in school funding. The opinion went on to establish the poor were not a “suspect class” in need of protecting. Just as destructively, the opinion established that “Though education is one of the most important services performed by the State, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution.” In one fell swoop, the San Antonio Supreme Court decision established States could only be sued for discrimination which was obviously done purposefully, the poor could not be protected by courts, and education is not a protected right. 

Instead of being the next Brown V Board, San Antonio ended up being the opposite: a case that made separate and unequal education legal – so long as the discrimination was based on class, not race.

 

The dissenting opinions are very worth reading in full and make some of the strongest arguments against economically segregated districts ever written. Justice White wrote,

I cannot disagree with the proposition that local control and local decision making play an important part in our democratic system of government. […] The difficulty with the Texas system, however, is that it provides a meaningful option to Alamo Heights and like school districts, but almost none to Edgewood and those other districts with a low per-pupil real estate tax base. In these latter districts, no matter how desirous parents are of supporting their schools with greater revenues, it is impossible to do so through the use of the real estate property tax. In these districts, the Texas system utterly fails to extend a realistic choice to parents because the property tax, which is the only revenue-raising mechanism extended to school districts, is practically and legally unavailable.

 

Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, 

The majority’s holding can only be seen as a retreat from our historic commitment to equality of educational opportunity … In my judgment, the right of every American to an equal start in life, so far as the provision of a state service as important as education is concerned, is far too vital to permit state discrimination…

 

Law scholars have also written opinion pieces attacking the decision. When Time Magazine asked law professors to name the worst Supreme Court decision since 1960, Erwin Chemerinsky (University of California, Irvine) annd Steven Shiffrin (Cornell University) both argued for San Antonio V Rodriguez. Shiffrin wrote,

By permitting funds for children in schools to be distributed on the basis of neighborhood wealth instead of educational needs, it has permitted millions of children to be imprisoned in a system of educational inequality.

 

The dissents to San Antonio offer many articulate arguments against wealth-based discrimination in primary education, but the case’s precedent remains a barrier to challenging the status quo. San Antonio V Rodriguez illustrates how one contentious Supreme Court ruling can change an era; for if it had gone the other way, the Court likely would have overturned discriminatory school funding models in most states. Instead, impoverished parents can no longer sue for equality with any hope of winning their cases. Instead, students are trapped in under-funded schools, condemned for being born to the wrong zip code. Heartbreaking, frustrating, and seemingly unchangeable.