"The power to change this lies in the voices and votes of those who read this decision and want something different." — Justice Riggs
4-3. guess who the 4 were.
Dismissed with prejudice. The case that began in 1994 is dead. It cannot be refiled.
The case formally became Hoke County Board of Education v. State, but it's still known by the name of the 8th grader who started it.
4-3. Chief Justice Newby wrote the majority opinion. The full ruling is 244 pages. Joined by Berger Jr., Barringer, and Allen.
Justice Phil Berger Jr. is the son of Senate President Phil Berger, who was a named intervenor-defendant fighting against school funding. NC's Code of Judicial Conduct says judges should recuse when a parent is a party. Berger Jr. denied his own recusal. Meanwhile, the majority referenced Justice Earls 17 times questioning her involvement based on legal work 20 years ago.
Berger Jr. wrote a concurrence saying the majority didn't go far enough. He called children's advocates "profiteering lawyers" and said the court needed to "exorcise this aberration from our jurisprudence."
His words: "The time to kill a snake is when you've got the hoe in your hand."
Procedural grounds. The majority ruled the trial court lost jurisdiction when the case expanded beyond the original five low-wealth counties into a statewide lawsuit.
They did not address whether children have a right to a sound basic education. They said the case was the wrong shape. The three-judge panel statute they cited was enacted in 2014, 20 years after the case was filed.
Nine years of funding orders vacated. The $1.75 billion transfer ordered in 2022. The $677 million trial court order. The compliance framework. The remedial plan. All of it. Gone.
No students left. The majority argued that none of the original student plaintiffs are still in school. The case was filed in 1994. The court sat on this round for 771 days. Every year of delay aged out more plaintiffs.
Then they pointed at the empty chairs.
Compare: Singleton v. DHHS (2024). Same court. Same panel issue. An eye surgeon challenged healthcare regulations. The court remanded the case for correction. Unanimously. Kids got dismissed. The surgeon got a do-over.
"We now live in a world where everyone has supercomputers in their pockets; personal laptops and tablet computers are more commonplace than desktop computers."
Majority opinion, p.101. Their argument for why the case is moot.
"Judges are not experts on education policy."
Majority opinion, p.109. The full ruling is 244 pages. They killed a 300-page expert plan.
"[O]ne can only wonder how many additional teachers, books, classrooms, and programs could have been provided by that money."
Majority opinion, p.109. Complaining about litigation costs after killing $677 million in school funding.
"We encourage all to direct their desire to enhance education policy to the branches that the people constitutionally charged with addressing such policy questions."
Majority opinion, p.109. They are reminding you to vote in November.
Read the full opinion and dissents. The dissents are worth your time.
"The majority's message to our children is clear: pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but there is nothing this court will do if the political branches never met their obligation to put boots on your feet in the first place."
Riggs called the right to a sound basic education "a parchment promise, worth no more than the paper on which it was written." She noted the court took 771 days to issue this opinion, then concluded in "fewer than thirty pages of actual legal analysis."
"So unpersuasive is the majority's stated reasoning that one is left to consider what is unstated."
Earls wrote that the majority "swaps $678 million in 'necessary and appropriate' funding to remedy the ongoing violation of schoolchildrens' rights for three decades of broken promises and a shoddy explanation." She called the majority's laptop argument "too ludicrous to merit further response."
"This is the end of Leandro as a lawsuit, but not Leandro as a promise to public school students."
Dietz, a Republican, wrote that the case had "lost its way" but argued it should have been corrected, not killed. He proposed a "special, streamlined class action" as a path forward and chastised all sides for abandoning "rationality, objectivity, tolerance, skepticism."
one of those is a Republican.
The constitutional right to a "sound basic education" still exists. The court didn't overturn that. They just made sure nobody can enforce it.
The plan still exists. The WestEd report. The $5.6 billion breakdown. The teacher pipelines, the counselors, the Pre-K expansion. All of it still works. Nobody killed the plan. They killed the case that would have made them fund it.
The money still exists. The state is sitting on billions in reserves. They found $600 million for vouchers. They have the money. They just don't have a court making them spend it on your kids.
The courts won't save us. The legislature built this system. The only path left is the ballot box.
Elect people who'll fund schools because it's right. Not because a judge made them.
The NC Supreme Court dismissed Leandro v. State. With prejudice. After 32 years, the case is over. It cannot be brought again. 4-3.
The courts are done. Elect people who'll fund schools because it's right, not because a judge made them. State house. State senate. Every seat.
Keep Anita Earls in 2026. Flip two seats in 2028. This court killed Leandro. The next one doesn't have to look like this one.
Current court: 5R-2D. Earls (D) up in 2026 vs. Sarah Stevens (R). Three R seats up in 2028: Newby, Barringer, Berger Jr. Win 2 of 3 = 4-3 D majority.
They had $600M+ for vouchers. They killed the case that would have funded your kid's school. Ask your legislator why.