Justice Denied, Again
Justice Leland DeGrasse gets a "C" for effort for his latest ruling in the Dianne Payne case since he has at least typed out a short ruling dismissing her plea for school vouchers for her children, but the contents of that ruling still earn the same "F" he accrued for the single scrawled sentence with which he slammed the courthouse door in her face the last time. Judge DeGrasse, of the Supreme Court in New York County, has now taken the time to explain his legal reasoning for dismissing this suit a second time. It's to his "credit" that he has "crafted" a document that can vacillate from glaring injustice to grating inanity in a mere half page. But that display of judicial prowess will come as little comfort to Daquasia and Rayshawn Payne, who remain trapped indefinitely in failing public schools.
Ms. Payne's legal odyssey on behalf of her children first started in January, when the Queens single mother of five filed a motion seeking to intervene in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit. She asked that, while the state and city argued over funding for city schools, her two youngest children receive the equivalent of a voucher to attend parochial schools. Ms. Payne reasoned that since the courts had already ruled that the city schools provide an unconstitutionally inadequate education, she should at least be able to spend the current per pupil cost of a public-school education and obtain a real education at private schools of equal or lesser cost.
Judge DeGrasse, who has presided over the CFE lawsuit, wouldn't even let Ms. Payne and her children into the courthouse. Even as the state was prepared to argue over her request, Judge DeGrasse handed down a surprise ruling declining, in one handwritten sentence, to even hear arguments. Undeterred, Ms. Payne filed her suit again, this time as a separate action instead of trying to link it to the CFE suit. At first she appeared to draw, in Judge Marilyn Diamond, a jurist who seemed more likely to be sympathetic to her children's plight. Judge Diamond, however, found Ms. Payne's case substantially similar to the CFE case in its arguments about the state of the public schools, and therefore decided that Judge DeGrasse should hear it.
Which is how he came to be rejecting the plea a second time. This time, at least, he has explained himself. But that explanation doesn't hold up. The crux is that Judge DeGrasse says "viable causes of action have not been stated." Ms. Payne charged, as did the original CFE lawsuit, that the city's public school's violate the state constitution's education clause. Judge DeGrasse has concluded, however, that while groups like the Campaign for Fiscal Equity have grounds to sue to redress violations of the education clause, individuals do not.
This is a specious argument, because it holds that while an amorphous organization like the CFE has standing to sue to improve education, the individual students being educated do not. Judge DeGrasse would effectively give the CFE a monopoly on defending educational quality in the city, Ms. Payne's lawyer, Eric Grannis, noted yesterday. Judge DeGrasse seems to have forgotten the history of a case over which he has spent so much time presiding - the CFE case included several individual co-plaintiffs, including a current City Council member, Robert Jackson, and his two children.
Judge DeGrasse has also misread the case law he cites in his ruling. The courts have indeed held that individuals cannot sue under the education clause for monetary damages to compensate them for a poor education they received in the past. An illiterate adult, say, can't win money from the state for failing to teach him how to read. There is no bar, however, to seeking forward-looking relief, which is what Ms. Payne is doing in requesting vouchers to prevent her children from being denied a sound basic education in the future.
The one silver lining is that Judge DeGrasse has handed down his ruling relatively quickly, which gives Ms. Payne an opportunity to get on with an appeal. Mr. Grannis says his client is disappointed at this setback. All along, he reports, one of her goals has been to make her case to the public. That she has certainly done. If the courts are going to involve themselves in education, they should at least do it in a way that will have a real impact, and vouchers are it. But her children are still languishing in failing public schools. Judge DeGrasse didn't see a problem with that, but with luck the First Appellate Division will.
