HISTORY | Past lawsuits failed, but effort puts pressure on legislators

The Chicago Urban League isn't the first to ask Illinois' courts to force state lawmakers to reform school-funding inequities. At least two other coalitions have tried and failed.

The odds don't look much better this time around.

More than a decade ago, former Illinois Supreme Court Justice John Nickels penned the legalese that remains the big hurdle that the Urban League must clear if its push for more equal funding statewide is to succeed. Nickels wrote in 1996 that while school-funding policy "might be thought unwise, undesirable or unenlightened," the matter is an issue for state lawmakers, not the courts.

In the lawsuit that Nickels ruled on, the arguments for change hinged on whether the state Constitution requires all schools to be funded equally. In a second case, filed by parents in East St. Louis and decided in 1999, the question was whether the Constitution required the state to guarantee adequate school facilities.

In both instances, the high court held that the Constitution offered no such guarantees and punted the issue back to the Legislature, which has resisted higher taxes to finance education.

"Whether this case can thread its way through the two decisions already on the books is something that remains to be seen," former state senator and 1994 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dawn Clark Netsch said of the Urban League effort.

"It is a tough obstacle," said Netsch, who teaches law at Northwestern University.

All but one of the seven justices joined Illinois' high court since the 1990s decisions came down, and that could help the Urban League's lawsuit. Also, the Legislature passed a new Civil Rights law in 2003 that gives the group a fresh jumping-off point for its case.

Even if the lawsuit fails, it will put pressure on lawmakers. "This is just another way to draw more attention to the problem, and another way to hit legislators to make them actually do something" about school funding, said Chrissy Mancini, associate executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago research group.