Education Law

Separate But Free

Joshua E. Weishart

Abstract “Separate but equal” legally sanctioned segregation in public schools until Brown. Ever since, separate but free has been the prevailing dogma excusing segregation. From “freedom of choice” plans that facilitated massive resistance to desegregation to current school choice plans exacerbating racial, socioeconomic, and disability segregation, proponents have venerated parental freedom as the overriding principle. […]

Governance of Steel and Kryptonite Politics in Contemporary Public Education Reform

Written by: James S. Liebman, Elizabeth Cruikshank, Christina Ma

Abstract Entrenched bureaucracies and special-interest politics hamper public education in the United States. In response, school districts and states have recently adopted or promoted reforms designed to release schools from bureaucratic control and empower them to meet strengthened outcome standards. Despite promising results, the reforms have been widely criticized, including by the educationally disadvantaged families […]

Steven G. Calabresi & Abe Salander, Religion and the Equal Protection Clause: Why the Constitution Requires School Vouchers

Ask anyone whether the Constitution permits discrimination on the basis of religion, and the response will undoubtedly be no. Yet the modern Supreme Court has not recognized that the antidiscrimination command of the Fourteenth Amendment protects religion in the same way that the Amendment protects against discrimination on the basis of race or gender. In […]

Scott A. Moss, The Overhyped Path from Tinker to Morse: How the Student Speech Cases Show the Limits of Supreme Court Decisions-for The Law and for the Litigants

63 Fla. L. Rev. 1407 (2011)| | | | Each of the Supreme Court’s high school student speech cases reflected the social angst of its era. In 1965’s Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, three Iowa teens broke school rules to wear armbands protesting the Vietnam War. In 1983, amidst parental and political […]

Kit Johnson, The Wonderful World of Disney Visas

63 Fla. L. Rev. 915 (2011)|  | | ARTICLE :: International workers play an important role in perpetuating the carefully crafted fantasy that to visit the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida is to be transported to far-off destinations around the globe. This Article examines how Disney has filled its need for these workers in […]

David Marcus, Flawed but Noble: Desegregation Litigation and its Implications for the Modern Class Action

63 Fla. L. Rev. 657 (2011)| | | | INTRODUCTION :: From the perspective of the present day, Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure contains a difficult puzzle. After a court certifies a class pursuant to Rule 23(b)(3) in a money damages case, absent class members must receive notice and have a […]

Robert A. Garda, Jr., The White Interest in School Integration

63 Fla. L. Rev. 599 (2011)| | | | ABSTRACT :: Discussions concerning desegregation, affirmative action, and voluntary integration focus primarily, if not exclusively, on whether such policies harm or benefit minorities. Scant attention is paid to the benefits whites receive in multiracial schools, despite white interests underpinning more than thirty years of Supreme Court […]

Lee Goldman, Student Speech and the First Amendment: A Comprehensive Approach

63 Fla. L. Rev. 395 (2011)| |  | | INTRODUCTION :: Can a school discipline a student for creating a vulgar parody profile of the school principal or another student on the website MySpace? Can it preclude a student from wearing at school a T-shirt that reads, “Homosexuality is shameful”? These are some of the difficult […]

Richard D. Shane, Teachers as Sexual Harassment Victims: The Inequitable Protections of Title VII In Public Schools

61 Fla. L. Rev. 355 (2009) | | | | INTRODUCTION :: In 1992, a fifth-grade girl complained to her public school teacher that the boy sitting next to her repeatedly rubbed his body against her and made sexually explicit comments to her. After school authorities ignored her repeated complaints, the student filed suit against […]

Lindsay M. Saxe, Politics versus Precision: Did the Miami-Dade School Board Violate the First Amendment when it Voted to Remove Vamos a Cuba! from its District libraries?: ACLU v. Miami-Dade County School Board, 557 F.3d 1177 (11th Cir. 2009)

61 Fla. L. Rev. 921 (2009) | | | | INTRODUCTION :: Juan Amador, a self-described political prisoner from Cuba, was outraged when he read the inaccurate portrayal of life in Cuba contained in Vamos a Cuba!, a book in his daughter’s elementary school library. Amador promptly requested that the school remove the book from […]

Emily Gold Waldman, Returning to Hazelwood's Core: A New Approach to Restrictions on School- Sponsored Speech

60 Fla. L. Rev. 63 (2008) | | | | INTRODUCTION :: Nearly twenty years ago in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the Supreme Court, in upholding the constitutionality of a public high school principal’s censorship of a student newspaper produced in a journalism class, held that “educators do not offend the First Amendment by […]

Samuel J. Horovitz, Two Wrongs Don't Negate a Copyright: Don't Make Students Turnitin if You Won't Give it Back

60 Fla. L. Rev. 229 (2008) | | | | INTRODUCTION :: The story goes something like this: There was a particularly difficult college professor notorious for a low grading scale. After years of low grade following low grade, one paper finally earned a B minus, the highest grade ever awarded by this professor. Word […]

Ben "Ziggy" Williamson, The Gunslinger to the Ivory Tower Came: Should Universities Have a Duty to Prevent Rampage Killings?

60 Fla. L. Rev. 895 (2008) | | | | INTRODUCTION :: On April 16, 2007, Seung Hui Cho, a Virginia Tech student, went on a rampage across the university’s campus. He murdered thirty- two people-twenty-seven students and five professors-before killing himself. Cho’s rampage was not only the worst mass shooting on an American university […]

Mark C. Weber, Reflections on the New Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act

58 Fla. L. Rev. 7 (2006) | | | | INTRODUCTION :: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, Orwellian title and all, received its presidential signature on December 3, 2004. The Act is already fully in effect, and the United States Department of Education proposed regulations to implement it on June 21, 2005. Although […]

Nicolas Hamann, Florida Constitutional Law: Reducing Legislative Discretion: A Clearly Unclear Application of Expressio Unius

58 Fla. L. Rev. 935 (2006) | | | | TEXT :: The Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) provided public school students with the option of transferring to either an eligible private school or to another public school that met certain academic requirements. If the student chose a private school, the State would then issue a […]

Lila Haughey, Florida Constitutional Law: Closing the Door to Opportunity: The Florida Supreme Court's Analysis of Uniformity in the Context of Article IX, Section 1

58 Fla. L. Rev. 945 (2006) | | | | TEXT :: The Florida legislature enacted the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) in 2002 to improve the quality of education in Florida, allowing students at failing public schools to either attend another public school or use state funds to enroll at a private school. Florida public […]

Jason Marques, Florida Constitutional Law: Circumscribing Legislative Authority in The Absence of a Clear Prohibition

58 Fla. L. Rev. 957 (2006) | | | | TEXT :: The Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), a state-funded, parent- choice voucher system, was designed to provide private school scholarships to students enrolled in certain Florida public schools. Upon its enactment in 1999, Respondents assailed the OSP as facially defective under both the state and […]

O. Carter Snead, Dynamic Complementarity: Terri's Law and Separation of Powers Principles in the End-Of-Life Context

57 Fla. L. Rev. 53 (2005) | | | | INTRODUCTION :: The bitter dispute over the proper treatment of Theresa Marie Schiavo-a severely brain damaged woman, unable to communicate and with no living will or advance directive-has garnered enormous attention in the media, both national and international. What began as a heated disagreement between […]

Christopher Wolfe, Moving Beyond Rhetoric

57 Fla. L. Rev. 1065 (2005) | | | | TEXT :: William Eskridge’s Body Politics: Lawrence v. Texas and the Constitution of Disgust and Contagion is an unusually rhetorical piece. At times it appears that Eskridge thinks that if he characterizes his opponents’ position as one of “disgust” and fear of “contagion” often enough […]

David Crump, The Narrow Tailoring Issue in The Affirmative Action Cases: Reconsidering the Supreme Court's Approval in Gratz and Grutter of Race-Based Decision-Making by Individualized Discretion

56 Fla. L. Rev. 483 (2004) | | | | INTRODUCTION :: The Supreme Court’s doctrine known as strict scrutiny is divided into two elements. First, there is the requirement that a State identify a “compelling governmental interest” that supports the state’s use of race as a factor. Second, and just as important, there is […]

Monica Vila, Constitutional Law: Thou Shalt Not Establish Religion

56 Fla. L. Rev. 819 (2004) | | | | INTRODUCTION :: Appellant, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, erected a two-and- one-half ton monument of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama State Judicial Building. The monument, which Appellant installed to reflect the moral foundation of law, was also engraved […]

Robert A. Caplen, Constitutional Law: Forecasting the Sunset of Racial Preferences in Higher Education while Broadening their Horizons

56 Fla. L. Rev. 853 (2004) | | | | INTRODUCTION :: Respondents implemented admissions policies designed to select an academically qualified and diverse student body with substantial promise for success within the legal profession and filed a lawsuit alleging discriminated against her on the basis of race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment held […]