Justices talk about school funding

The case was filed in 1991 on behalf of freshman Nathan DeRolph.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- An Ohio Supreme Court justice said he once wanted to shut down state government to force lawmakers to fix the unconstitutional system of paying for public education. Two justices who never wanted to take the case switched their positions and tried to impose a fix in a failed effort to get rid of it.
As the 10th anniversary approaches of the court's landmark school funding decision -- the first of four rulings over seven years in the case known as DeRolph -- four of the seven justices gave a rare behind-the-bench look at deliberations in interviews The Columbus Dispatch published.
Two of them, Republicans who were part of the three-member minority saying the court had no jurisdiction over the case, now say the lawsuit has led to improvements for Ohio students.
"There's just no question that DeRolph has had a positive impact on schools," Chief Justice Thomas Moyer said.
"Even though I maintained it did not belong in our court, the political reality is there is much more attention focused on education than there used to be before the case," Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton said.
The majority -- two Democrats and two Republicans, only one of whom remains on the bench -- ruled March 24, 1997, that the school funding system unconstitutionally relies too much on property taxes, creating a disparity between rich and poor districts.
The case was filed in 1991 on behalf of Nathan DeRolph, a high school freshman in rural Perry County who had to sit on the floor to take a test because there weren't enough desks. In 1996, Moyer allowed 90 minutes of arguments by attorneys, an hour longer than usual.
Justice Paul Pfeifer recalls that deliberations afterward around the justices' round oak table were much shorter, about 20 minutes.
Before he sat down, former Justice Andrew Douglas knew his vote: "We had to do something."
Where Cook stood
Former Justice Deborah Cook was adamant that how to pay for schools should be left to the governor and lawmakers -- a position she never wavered from, according to the other justices.
She declined the newspaper's interview request.
Moyer and Stratton said they agreed but were open to persuasion. However, over the next several months, they came to side with Cook.
Then-Gov. George Voinovich, lawmakers and newspaper editorials blasted the court for meddling after the ruling was announced.
"There was never any hesitation among the four of us about whether what we did was right," Justice Douglas said.
The ruling sent the case back to Perry County, where the trial judge ruled in 1999 that the state hadn't complied with the order to overhaul the system. Back it went to the Supreme Court.
With no hope of getting the three-member minority to budge after the bad reception of the first decision, Justice Pfeifer argued for an even more drastic approach.
He wanted to tell the governor and lawmakers that no more state money could be spent until school funding was fixed. He thought that would solve the problem in a week.
Justices Francis Sweeney, Alice Robie Resnick and Douglas refused.
The second decision, on May 11, 2000, acknowledged the state had spent more on education but said the system remained unconstitutional. Despite more funding increases, the case landed back in the high court the next year.
This time, Justices Moyer and Stratton forged a new majority, joining Justices Douglas and Pfeifer in a September 2001 ruling that outlined new school funding formulas and ordered the Legislature to enact them. Justices Sweeney and Resnick did not want to tell lawmakers how to fix schools.
On Dec. 11, 2002, the original majority again ruled the system of relying on property taxes is unconstitutional. Then they ended the court's involvement in the case.
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