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Constitutional Issues

State Supreme Court Rules That Education Funding Meets Minimum Adequacy Standard; No Equal Protection Violation Against Students from Neediest School Districts

On Wednesday, January 17, the Connecticut Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated decision regarding the adequacy of education funding from the State.  In Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, Inc. v. Rell, 2018 WL 472325 (2018), the court ruled that the State met its obligation to provide “minimally adequate” funding to school districts across Connecticut, and did […]

Connecticut Swiftly Responds to Federal Rollback of Transgender Student Protections

Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy has acted quickly to respond to recent developments in Federal law affecting the rights of transgender students by issuing an executive order reasserting the State’s protections for transgender people.  Despite a change in Federal guidance, and as detailed below, Connecticut affords greater protections to transgender people than currently provided under […]

The United States Department of Justice Withdraws Its Objection to a Nationwide Order Banning the Implementation and Enforcement of the Departments of Justice and Education’s Guidance on Transgender Students

On February 10, 2017, the U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) under the Trump administration withdrew a motion made in November 2016 under the Obama administration with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit; in its motion, the DOJ objected to a Texas Federal Court judge’s nationwide ban on the enforcement by the […]

CCEJF v. Rell: Where Do We Stand?

On September 7, 2016, Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher issued a 255-page Memorandum of Decision in Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, Inc. v. Rell, a case that has been pending for more than 10 years. The decision held that the State provides a constitutionally acceptable amount of funding for education, but the distribution of the funding […]

Gun Bill Includes Many New Requirements For School Boards

While the other aspects of Connecticut’s new gun control law have received more notoriety, the new law included a number of provisions intended to improve school safety and security including the following:  Requires each school to have a safety committee; Requires each school to conduct a risk vulnerability assessment; Require each school to have a […]

Who’s watching who? And who can review?

School administrators frequently grapple with the treatment of video recordings. From Constitutional issues to concerns about education records, administrators need to be aware of how to use surveillance cameras appropriately and how to respond to requests for copies of those video recordings. As more and more districts are using video surveillance in schools, this issue promises to […]

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Student Off-Campus Online Speech Cases

As you may recall from our previous posts regarding student’s online speech, the summer of 2011 brought with it a split in the Circuit Courts regarding how to handle discipline of student’s off-campus online  speech.  Specifically, the cases J.S. v. Blue Mountain Sch. Dist. and Layshock v. Hermitage Sch. Dist. out of the Third Circuit and Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools out of the […]

Second Circuit Again Sides with District in Recent First Amendment Case

The issue in Cox v. Warwick Valley Central School District stemmed from a student assignment to write an essay for English class. The teacher asked students to write about what they would do if they had 24 hours to live. While this sort of creative writing occurs every day in classrooms across the country, teachers sometimes get troubling […]

Circuit Courts Continue Battle Over Free Speech Rights for Students

School districts in Connecticut looking for guidance on how to handle discipline of students engaging in provocative speech on-line at home have been watching with interest the outcome of two cases in the Third Circuit that seemed to reach conflicting results.  Both cases were re-heard by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, […]