April 3, 2026

Last edited: 4/4/2026

The Leandro case in North Carolina has evolved to a pivotal moment for the state’s obligation to provide all citizens with a sound, basic education. On April 2nd, the Leandro Case was dismissed. By having the case dismissed with prejudice, the North Carolina Supreme Court has not only closed the case file; it has also closed any remaining legal doors that could have compelled the state to treat education as an actual legal right.

The importance of this dismissal may be overlooked if we only consider it a chapter in a long history of education litigation. Instead, it is more like a ceiling; the moment the state courts retreat, it becomes much more difficult for citizens of North Carolina to hold the state accountable for fulfilling the state’s constitutional commitment in anything that resembles real time. This will matter because North Carolina currently has two different education systems: one where families have access to subsidized private choice (which operates like a consumer market) and another where the state retains full legal responsibility. The dismissal of Leandro does not create these two tracks; it solidifies them.

There is a dramatic change in the legal landscape here. A constitutional right that is not capable of judicial redress is more like an ethical hope than a legal requirement. The most important risk of the court’s jurisdiction reasoning is that if the court states it cannot order the funds necessary to remedy a constitutional violation, the violation may continue indefinitely with no authority responsible to rectify it.

In this regard, “right without a remedy” is more than just a rhetorical phrase. While the sound basic education standard may continue to be cited in speeches, briefs and electoral platforms, if there is no court that can order action, that standard may become a dead letter. The state may be considered to owe the duty to comply with sound basic education; however, there is no practical means of enforcing that duty, meaning that the state can choose to ignore the duty consistently when the political branches elect to do so. This is not just a separation of powers issue, but a transfer of ultimate authority over constitutional compliance to the same political representatives alleged to have failed in their duty in the first place.

Justice Allison Riggs’ dissent offers the most compelling opposing argument to that retreat. Her statement about abandoning the North Carolina children was powerful not just because it is a very emotional statement, but also because it specifies the actual institutional impact: if there are no courts, there is no substituted remedy for children. Rather than having a remedy, they receive only additional delay, additional bargaining and an acknowledgment from the state that it is under an obligation but can still refuse to abide by such obligation.

That dissent is significant in that it captures the human cost associated with the finality of doctrine. For low-resourced counties, present-day law now relies primarily upon whether or not there exists legislative will to provide a remedy. The existence of legislative will is also the same thing that has historically proven unreliable. Thus, the dismissal by the Court functions more like an allowance for continued drift than an end.

The impact of this change on rural areas is particularly severe. Counties like Halifax and Anson face practical rather than theoretical challenges regarding their ongoing ability to repair and upgrade the physical facilities used by schools, to recruit qualified teachers to staff the schools, and to provide an adequate educational program to meet the needs of students. While the districts previously had a state obligation to provide resources for schools to become/remain “basic” through a legislative and/or judicially recognized failure of the state to meet its constitutional obligation to them under the “old Leandro” remedial framework, with the vacatur of that remedial order, that leverage is now working against them drastically.

There are also separate access issues due to the voucher system; many rural counties have fewer options for students to use private schools, have less physical transportation available to transport students to private schools or have less adjacent support available to help defray tuition costs. Therefore, while public support for families in urban and suburban counties can be used to purchase private options for students, rural families have neither a strong public plan to repair their schools nor an alternative market from which to purchase school district educational services. That is the geographic trap; the most isolated school districts generally do not have the opportunity to take advantage of the exit system, yet are among the least likely to receive any compensatory investment in public education.

The ladder concept as discussed in “the Voucher Trap” (on knotcut!!) is once again applicable to this situation, as the ladder has been taken away from most districts, and there is no secondary avenue available to obtain the basic resources established as a floor (minimum) by either the Court or the legislature.

The upcoming legislative session will reveal the new division of authority right away. On one side is an effort to appropriate approximately $463 million to eliminate the voucher waitlist, which further supports the private option of the system. On the other side is Governor Stein’s $1.4 billion Critical Needs Budget that maintains public education, teacher compensation and related Medicaid concerns cannot be delayed anymore. The removal of Leandro as a coercive force will allow the legislature to focus on consumer-facing areas of education without the same amount of legal risk.

Prior to the ruling, even an imprecise court order created an incentive for the legislature to fund public education. After the ruling, that pressure does not exist. The legislature may now view a public education program like other policy programs, rather than as a constitutional duty requiring a preferential or expedited process for repair. Thus, the “consumer” model can achieve freedom, while the “citizen” model can no longer use legal means to force the legislature to act.

As the current political climate causes a widening shift away from the common school ideal, North Carolina is currently on a path to converge toward a dual system of education whereby public schools are expected to accept each and every state mandate, deal with every controversy in society, and address every demographic challenge; while at the same time, private voucher schools provide less accountability through public means of support. Changes in legislation (SB 227), which incrementally move towards government control of curriculum and DBI-related activities, are evidence of this. By placing public schools under greater scrutiny and regulation than private voucher schools, the two systems serve different functions, as they are not held to the same standards of accountability. Therefore, this creates an unequal distribution of funds, and thus, unequal burdens, like how public schools fulfil the state’s minimum obligations and supervise its culture wars while private schools purchase public dollar subsidies for freedoms.

By dismissing Leandro, the legal framework of abandonment has reached its ultimate limit. While the state may still speak of adequacy, opportunity and constitutional duty, the physician is not allowed into the room once the patient begins to decline.

North Carolina has not just diminished a right to education but has transformed it into a “promise” to be kept, only if it is desired within the political branches of government. This change represents the difference between being a right to education state, where the government is required to hold itself accountable to its citizens, versus being a market for education state, which rewards exit, fragmentation, and selective investment. Therefore, with the dismissal of Leandro with prejudice, the maximum has been reached.