San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez 411 U.S. 1 (1973)

• Author: Kenneth L. Karst
• Pages: 2309-2310

Page 2309

Rodriguez was the BURGER COURT'S definitive statement on the subject of EQUAL PROTECTION guarantees against WEALTH DISCRIMINATION?and the statement was that the Court wanted the subject to go away.

Under Texas law, the financing of local school districts relies heavily on local property taxes. Thus a district rich in taxable property can levy taxes at low rates and still spend almost twice as much per pupil as a poor district can spend, even when the poor district taxes its property at high rates. A federal district court, relying on WARREN COURT precedents, concluded that wealth was a SUSPECT CLASSIFICATION, that education was a FUNDAMENTAL INTEREST, and thus that strict judicial scrutiny of the state-imposed inequalities was required. The trial court also concluded that, even if the permissive RATIONAL BASIS standard of review were appropriate, the Texas school finance system lacked any reasonable basis. The Supreme Court reversed, 5?4, in an opinion by Justice LEWIS F. POWELL that was plainly designed as a comprehensive pronouncement about equal protection doctrine.

The opinion was definitive, as a coffin is definitive. Despite what the Court had said in BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION

Page 2310

(1954) about education as the key to effective citizenship, here it said that education was not a fundamental interest in the sense that triggered STRICT SCRUTINY?at least not when some minimal level of education was being provided. Indeed, said the majority, the courts lacked power to create new substantive rights by defining interests as "fundamental," unless those interests were already guaranteed elsewhere in the Constitution. Here was formal recognition of the Burger Court's zero-population-growth policy for fundamental interests.

Nor was wealth a suspect classification. Decisions such as GRIFFIN V. ILLINOIS (1956) and DOUGLAS V. CALIFORNIA (1963) had involved INDIGENTS "completely unable to pay" for the benefits at stake, who "sustained an absolute deprivation" of the benefits. Here, the deprivation was only relative; pupils in poor districts were receiving some education. Furthermore, although the trial court had found a significant correlation between district wealth and family wealth, the Supreme Court held the proof of that correlation insufficient; poor children, after all, might live in the shadows of a rich district's factories. In any case, Justice Powell concluded, the evidence was mixed on the question...