Emerging School Finance Litigation in Mississippi

Authors

LaJuana Davis, Cumberland School of Law

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Abstract

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the implementation of Mississippi's education funding statute, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), which requires the state to fully fund public elementary and secondary education. In those two decades, Mississippi has largely avoided the education finance lawsuits faced by other states, despite the state legislature having only fully funded MAEP twice since its enactment. Although courts have been reluctant to push state legislatures to increase funding to achieve greater equity and adequacy of public school education, some plaintiffs have been successful in reforming education finance laws in other states. Recently, and for the first time, Mississippi's school finance funding structure faces significant challenges from litigants who are pressing for full funding of the state’s finance formula and for the state to restore public education as a constitutionally-protected right. Plaintiffs are now challenging the equality and the adequacy of the education that Mississippi provides to its schoolchildren. But a barrier to education finance litigation in Mississippi is an absence of any state constitutional duty to provide an education of any particular uniformity or quality and the lack of federal constitutional basis for a right to an education, much less on meeting any particular standard of adequacy. This article explores the constitutional and statutory structure of Mississippi's school finance law and the recent challenges to them.

Recommended Citation

Davis, LaJuana (2024) "Emerging School Finance Litigation in Mississippi," Mississippi College Law Review: Vol. 36: Iss. 2, Article 7.
Available at: https://dc.law.mc.edu/lawreview/vol36/iss2/7