San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973)
Historical Setting After Civil Rights success in the 1960’s, many of the United States underrepresented citizenry such as minorities and poor searched for equality through the Constitution. In San Antonio, Texas, citizens found that the school finance system was unjust and filed suit under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Federal District Court found that the Texas school finance system violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The State appealed to the Supreme Court.
Case Summary San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973) argued that education was a “fundamental right” implied in the Constitution and that poor Hispanic families were being treated as a “suspect class” due to financial disparities between wealthy and poor school districts. The argument was that this inequality of funding between school district’s violated the Equal Protection Clause. The State contended that education was not an Federal enumerated power, therefore it was reserved to the State and that included financial decisions.
Court’s Decision The Court found in a 5-4 ruling that this was not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because education is not a guarantee …show more content…
The Court applied Section 601 of the Civil Rights Act as reasoning to reverse the Court of Appeals. The unanimous opinion of the Court found that there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education (414 U.S. 563, 567). This reversed the Court of Appeals decision and required supplemental language