Recent Supreme Court Rulings Are Critical to Public Education
The United States Supreme Court handed down three significant rulings during the 2019 – 2020 term that will directly impact educators. The court delivered good and bad news.
Protections for LGBTQ workers
On June 15, the court ruled to protect LGBTQ workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. As the court put it, “An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or trans- gender defies the law.” Over 100 federal statutes prohibit sex discrimi- nation, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and the court’s ruling should apply to those statutes as well. This victory was a longtime coming for members and allies of the LGBTQ community. Under the ruling, the federal law also protect students at school.
Dreamers safe—for now
On June 18, the court ruled that the Trump administration’s rescis- sion of the federal program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was “arbitrary and capricious,” that it did not follow the procedures required by federal law, and that it did not properly consider how ending the program would affect those who rely on it.
In 2017, the Trump administra- tion abruptly ended DACA, which has enabled about 660,000 young people, known as Dreamers, to be sheltered in two-year increments from deportation. Since then, DACA holders have lived in limbo, while advocates—including NEA’s Office of General Counsel—fought Trump’s executive order all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The decision delighted Angelica Reyes, a Dreamer who teaches in Los Angeles. “It feels amazing!” she says.
School vouchers gain ground
The news from the court on June 30 wasn’t as welcome. In a 5-4 deci- sion, the court ruled in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that a provision in the Montana Consti- tution, designed to prevent public money from flowing to private reli- gious schools, could not be used to strike down a private school voucher program.
In 2018, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that a school voucher pro- gram violated this provision because it was intended to send money to private religious schools. The court struck down the entire program. The pro-voucher group handling the case appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the decision violated participating families’ free exercise of religion.
NEA supported Montana’s posi- tion, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court should not turn the federal free exercise clause into a mandate for state funding of religious schools.
By ruling for the plaintiffs, howev- er, the court appeared to do just that, clearing a legal path for the expansion of school voucher programs.
NEA leaders denounced the ruling, saying a majority on the court had allied itself with the far-right school privatization agenda.