Idaho school districts sue justices

BOISE – What if there were a big lawsuit, one side won, and the losing side refused to go along with the decision?

A group of Idaho school districts says that’s what happened after they sued the state Legislature over inadequate funding for school construction. The Idaho Supreme Court declared the current funding system unconstitutional, but then closed the case without ordering any changes. Now the schools are suing the individual justices in federal court, contending they deprived them of their constitutional rights.

“Any time the Legislature violates constitutional rights of any citizens, those citizens will have no remedy if the justices are unwilling to carry out the responsibilities of their oath of office that they support and defend the constitution against violation by the Legislature,” attorney Robert Huntley wrote in court papers. Huntley, a former Idaho Supreme Court justice, has represented the school districts in the case for 17 years, including five trips to the state Supreme Court. Each time, the schools won.

The state repeatedly appealed rulings in the case over the years, and at one point the Legislature even passed a law seeking to cancel the lawsuit. It was overturned as unconstitutional.

But attorneys for the five justices who ruled in the case say the federal court has no jurisdiction over how the Idaho Supreme Court handled the case, and they’re asking that the federal lawsuit be tossed out.

This morning, a federal judge in Boise will hear arguments from both sides – from the schools for granting a summary judgment in their favor, and from the justices to dismiss the federal lawsuit.

“It’s such an interesting case,” said University of Idaho law professor Elizabeth Brandt. “From any observer who’s looked at the long history of this case, you can see the frustration – how do you win and not win at the same time? But I think there are major procedural glitches with what they’re doing right now.”

UI law professor Jim Macdonald, a constitutional law specialist, said, “In a normal situation, if you don’t comply with court orders you could be held in contempt until you do comply.” But, he said, “The problem in this case is a separation of powers problem.”

Courts can’t necessarily order legislatures around, Macdonald said, even if they believe they’re violating the constitution. It’s the same fight that’s come up between courts and the executive branch nationally over court access for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

For the schools and their supporters, Macdonald said, the ultimate solution may be a political one. “Maybe in the next election you tell the voters that you think the Legislature is violating the constitution and try to get them voted out,” he said.

Merlyn Clark, attorney for the five justices, argues in court papers that federal case law says federal district courts have no jurisdiction over state Supreme Court decisions. If the school districts are unhappy with their ruling from the Idaho Supreme Court, he argued, they should appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Huntley says there’s nothing to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, because what the Idaho Supreme Court essentially did was end the case without a final ruling. Huntley doesn’t dispute the Idaho court’s decision that the state’s school-construction funding system is unconstitutional. He objects to the court stopping there, rather than remanding the case back down to state district court for hearings on the “remedy” to the problem.

Both sides in the case expected that move after the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling. The court, in its ruling, called on the state Legislature to change the funding system. The justices even gave examples of ways to fix the problem, including lowering the two-thirds supermajority for school construction bond elections, funding school buildings from the state’s general fund budget or tapping into corporate income tax revenue. But they said the Legislature should decide which fixes to pick.

Idaho lawmakers have long been resistant to state funding for school construction; that cost traditionally has been left to local taxpayers. But they’ve approved some small subsidies in recent years, as the case wound its way through the courts.

The Supreme Court in its ruling said it was retaining jurisdiction in the case to see what the Legislature did. After the 2006 legislative session, both sides submitted arguments to the court, with the state arguing that lawmakers had fixed the problems, and the schools arguing that they’d only made them worse. But the Supreme Court never considered those arguments or held any more hearings. Instead, in May 2006, the court’s clerk summoned the attorneys from both sides to a meeting at which he informed them, “It’s over,” and offered no further information.

“It was an odd sort of thing for the court to say,” Macdonald said. He added, “Of course, the Legislature isn’t going to do anything left to its own devices.”

Huntley filed public records requests for any decisions by the justices since the 2005 order, but there were none. “All the court did was have the clerk orally in a private meeting declare the case over and then refused to accept any more papers – a diabolical tactic to deny … any ability to either move for reconsideration or review,” he wrote in court papers.

Clark argued in court documents that the school districts aren’t entitled to any “remedy” phase of the court case, and that they’re simply “unsatisfied still with the Idaho Supreme Court’s decision to leave the legislating to the Legislature.”

Of the five justices who ruled in the case, only two still serve on the court, Justices Jim Jones and Roger Burdick. Justice Linda Copple Trout has retired, as has Justice Wayne Kidwell. The fifth justice who ruled on the case was Senior Judge Daniel Hurlbutt, who sat in as a pro-tem justice.