Key Quotes from Justice Hecht’s West Orange Cove II majority opinion:

Page numbers refer to the PDF file of the opinion posted to the Supreme Court’s website on Nov. 22, 2005.

( p.11) We now hold, as did the district court, that local ad valorem taxes have become a state property tax in violation of article VIII, section 1-e, as we warned ten years ago they inevitably would, absent a change in course, which has not happened. Although the districts have offered evidence of deficiencies in the public school finance system, we conclude that those deficiencies do not amount to a violation of article VII, section 1. We remain convinced, however, as we were sixteen years ago, that defects in the structure of the public school finance system expose the system to constitutional challenge. Pouring more money into the system may forestall those challenges, but only for a time. They will repeat until the system is overhauled.

(p.47) As the State defendants noted, however, the cost studies and court findings overlook the reality that almost all schools are meeting accreditation standards with current funding.

(p. 53-54) II. A. At the outset, the State defendants challenge the district court’s subject matter jurisdiction on three grounds: that the plaintiff and intervenor school districts lack standing to assert any of their constitutional claims, that their claims under article VII, section 1 are nonjusticiable political questions, and that article VII, section 1 is not self-executing and thus cannot be enforced by court action. With one exception, we have previously rejected all of these contentions, either expressly or implicitly, in this case when it was last before us or in the other cases in which the constitutionality of the public school finance system has been at issue. In none of our prior cases has a school district’s standing to challenge the public school finance system under article VII, section 1 been challenged, and we have not specifically addressed that issue.

To the extent we have already spoken to these issues, the State defendants urge us to reconsider. Our prior decisions have not ended litigation over school finance once and for all, and the State defendants argue that this is because the courts cannot give sufficiently certain meaning to the constitutional standards. Each new case, they argue, threatens to drag the courts inescapably into a morass of policy-making where they do not belong and from which they will not be able to extricate themselves, endlessly second-guessing the detailed structures of public education. We think our prior opinions on these matters are clear enough and remain correct

(p. 63) The State defendants do not contest that individuals would have standing to raise the claims in this case. The interests of individual taxpayers in suitable, adequate, efficient public education and in avoiding a state property tax might well diverge from those of their school districts. But individuals’ standing to assert these constitutional claims does not deprive school districts of standing to assert the same claims. Accordingly, we conclude that the plaintiff and intervenor school districts have standing to assert the claims made in this case.

(p. 78-79) In essence, we refused to find a constitutional violation when the challenged aspect of the system was not arbitrary. This comports with what we said in 1931 in Mumme v. Marrs:

The purpose of [article VII, section 1] as written was not only to recognize the inherent power in the Legislature to establish an educational system for the state, but also to make it the mandatory duty of that department to do so. . . . The Legislature alone is to judge what means are necessary and appropriate for a purpose which the Constitution makes legitimate. The legislative determination of the methods, restrictions, and regulations is final, except when so arbitrary as to be violative of the constitutional rights of the citizen.

(p. 81) It would be arbitrary, for example, for the Legislature to define the goals for accomplishing the constitutionally required general diffusion of knowledge, and then to provide insufficient means for achieving those goals. If the Legislature’s choices are informed by guiding rules and principles properly related to public education — that is, if the choices are not arbitrary — then the system does not violate the constitutional provision.

(p. 87) The public education system need not operate perfectly; it is adequate if districts are reasonably able to provide their students the access and opportunity the district court described.

(p. 91-92) Having carefully reviewed the evidence and the district court’s findings, we cannot conclude that the Legislature has acted arbitrarily in structuring and funding the public education system so that school districts are not reasonably able to afford all students the access to education and the educational opportunity to accomplish a general diffusion of knowledge.

We recognize that the standard of arbitrariness we have applied is very deferential to the Legislature, but as we have explained, we believe that standard is what the Constitution requires. Nevertheless, the standard can be violated. There is substantial evidence, which again the district court credited, that the public education system has reached the point where continued improvement will not be possible absent significant change, whether that change take the form of increased funding, improved efficiencies, or better methods of education.

(p. 97) There is much evidence that many districts’ facilities are inadequate, but it is undisputed that some 25% of the districts levy no I&S taxes. The State defendants argue that disparities among districts in available facilities are not proof of inefficiency absent evidence that the districts’ needs are similar. They contend that facilities needs vary widely depending on the size and location of schools, construction expenses, and other variables. We agree that such evidence is necessary and lacking. The State defendants also argue that to prove constitutional inefficiency the intervenors must offer evidence of an inability to provide for a general diffusion of knowledge without additional facilities, and that they have failed to do so. Again, we agree. Efficiency requires only substantially equal access to revenue for facilities necessary for an adequate system … The Legislature may well find many ways of improving the efficiency and adequacy of public education — ways not urged by the parties to this case — that do not involve increased funding.

(p. 109) The State also controls the expenditure of more than $1 billion in local tax revenues recaptured from 134 districts, which educate 12.3% of the students, requiring that they be effectively redistributed to the other districts. The number of districts and amount of revenue subject to recapture have almost tripled since 1994. The State’s control of this local revenue is a significant factor in considering whether local taxes have become a state property tax.

(p.111) Although the statute does not promise any particular level of supplemental funding, local supplementation is made a core component of the system structure, necessitated by the basic philosophy of the virtue of local control. The State cannot provide for local supplementation, pressure most of the districts by increasing accreditation standards in an environment of increasing costs to tax at maximum rates in order to afford any supplementation at all, and then argue that it is not controlling local tax rates.

(p. 111-112) Accordingly, we conclude that the public school finance system violates article VIII, section 1-e of the Texas Constitution. Various legislative proposals during the past year to remedy perceived problems with the public education system and its funding would reduce the maximum ad valorem tax rate and allow it to be exceeded for certain purposes. While we express no view on the appropriateness of any of these proposals, we are constrained to caution, as we have before, that a cap to which districts are inexorably forced by educational requirements and economic necessities, as they have been under Senate Bill 7, will in short order violate the prohibition of a state property tax.

(p. 114) The Constitution does not require a particular solution. We leave such matters to the discretion of the Legislature. To end the constitutional violation, we agree with the district court that the use of the current system must be enjoined. The district court delayed the effect of its injunction until October 1, 2005, to allow the Legislature time to respond. Since the injunction issued, the Legislature has undertaken to respond in a regular session and two special sessions. Its inability to do so appears to be due not to any lack of expertise in the issues but to the absence of agreement. At this point in time, it is unlikely that material changes could be made in the public education system that would affect the current school year. School districts will next begin to prepare budgets and set tax rates in the summer of 2006. To allow the State ample time to fully consider structural changes in the public education system, and to allow the system time to adjust to those changes, we postpone the effective date of the district court’s injunction to June 1, 2006.

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