State Education Funding and Courts

The North Carolina Supreme Court, now with a Republican majority, voted 4–3 on April 2, 2026 to throw out the decades‑long Leandro school‑funding lawsuit, reversing a 2022 ruling that had allowed a trial judge to order hundreds of millions of dollars in new education spending. Chief Justice Paul Newby wrote that the case, which began in 1994 over funding in low‑income districts, had morphed into a "full‑scale" attack on the General Assembly’s control over the education system and that the trial court’s authority effectively ended when the suit expanded statewide. The decision wipes away a lower‑court order that the state owed $678 million toward the first two years of an eight‑year, multibillion‑dollar remedial plan aimed at boosting teacher pay and recruitment, expanding pre‑K, and improving services for students with disabilities. Republicans who control the legislature will no longer be legally bound to that plan as they craft a new state budget, while Democratic Gov. Josh Stein condemned the ruling as ignoring precedent and enabling lawmakers to "deprive another generation" of their constitutional right to a sound education. In a sharp dissent, Justice Anita Earls warned that allowing the state to escape judicial scrutiny turns constitutional guarantees into "words on paper" with no real force, and advocates online are already framing the decision as a major setback for school‑funding equity and a warning sign for similar adequacy cases in other states.