Judge refuses to toss education funding lawsuit

The public school funding lawsuit led by the William Penn School District will continue after a state judge Tuesday denied an application brought by two leading Republican state lawmakers to quash it.

Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson delivered the four-page order denying the objection without prejudice filed on behalf of state Senate President Pro-Tempore Joseph Scarnati and House Speaker Mike Turzai, both Republicans, who claimed the fair funding formula enacted under Act 35 of 2016 remedied the funding inadequacies that initiated the lawsuit in 2014.

Simpson’s order said it was clear that a “factual dispute about the significance and adequacy of the funding changes wrought by the passage of Act 35 persists.”

“In addition,” Simpson wrote, “it is unclear whether the preceding statute has been sufficiently altered by Act 35 so as to present a substantially different controversy. Further, none of the respondents address our Supreme Court’s guidance in (the case) William Penn II.

“Therefore, we conclude that at this early procedural juncture, with the pleadings not yet closed, there are sufficient legal and factual issues that remain in dispute, such that this court cannot find petitioners’ constitutional claims moot.”

Simpson’s opinion was filed after a deferring acting on the motion in May when he overruled additional objections brought by respondents.

Since May, attorneys representing 16 petitioners filed a 112-page opposition complete with a number of affidavits addressing the funding inequities that still persist under Act 35. On Aug. 3, Scarnati replied saying in part that the funding regime that was in place when the suit was filed is no longer in play, and they are transferring the alleged constitutional violations from that nowdefunct statute to Act 35.

On the same day of Scarnati’s response, a brief field by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and the other executive-level respondents sided with the petitioners by saying they are not challenging “an isolated statutory or regulatory enactment,” but the adequacy of the state public education system.

Dan Ackelsberg of the Public Interest Law Center, which represents the petitioners, said Tuesday afternoon that the suit has always been about challenging the system.

“One statute change does not change that failure, that system,” he said. “This has always been a challenge the system and the legislature’s failure to adequately fund public schools.”

Tuesday’s ruling, he added, is a “big step toward finally getting our day in court.”

“We thought the issue was crystal clear, but at the same time it was still holding everything else up,” Ackelsberg said. “We felt very strongly that the issues that we sued over in 2014 are as valid today as they were then.

“We look forward to children across the commonwealth getting their days in court.”