Download Complaint

On October 23, 2025 Public Advocates, a civil rights law firm, and pro bono counsel Morrison & Foerster, filed a landmark constitutional challenge on behalf of students, families, and educators against the State of California for operating a discriminatory school facility funding system that forces children in low-wealth districts to learn in buildings with toxic mold, leaky classrooms, failing HVAC systems and dangerous playgrounds while wealthy districts are funded to build state-of-the-art facilities.

The lawsuit—which follows a February 2024 demand letter threatening litigation over inequities in the distribution of funds—challenges California’s School Facility Program, alleging it violates students’ fundamental right to a quality education under the California Constitution in how it funds major school renovations. The state requires districts to raise 40% of modernization costs locally before accessing state funding—a system that favors wealthy districts where it is easier to pass bonds and the bonds tend to be larger. This advantage is compounded by the state providing 60% of the costs of all approved projects, regardless of the wealth of the district. By being able to generate more local revenue, wealthier districts are able to gobble up more state matching funds and get in line for approvals sooner to boot. Rather than redressing local wealth disparities with state bond funds, the state’s provision of a 60% match to all comers replicates them.

The constitutional challenge mirrors California’s landmark Serrano v. Priest case, also brought by Public Advocates, which struck down wealth-based discrimination in school operations funding 50 years ago. Just as Serrano established that it was unlawful to make “the quality of a child’s education a function of the wealth of his parents and neighbors,” today’s School Facility Program creates identical violations.

In addition to prohibiting wealth-based disparities, California’s Constitution guarantees education as a fundamental right and prohibits the state from operating a schools system that denies basic equality of educational opportunity to students in particular districts. Research shows that facility conditions directly impact student health, learning outcomes, and educational achievement, yet the state has maintained the current dual system despite clear evidence of its discriminatory operation.

The plaintiffs seek a court order requiring California to distribute facility funding in a manner that enables low-wealth districts an equal opportunity to modernize their facilities, including by adopting a sliding scale that provides more state funding to fiscally disadvantaged low-wealth districts and ending the first-come, first-served application process that also favors the wealthy.