In the mid-1990s in rural North Carolina, Hoke County High School student Robb Leandro watched a livestream of students in a wealthier school district several counties to the north conduct a science lab. At the time, it was the only way the AP biology students in his largely rural and poor county could do the required lab component without the necessary equipment.

More than 30 years later, Leandro is a practicing healthcare attorney at Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP in Raleigh, North Carolina. But his last name has come to function as a metonym for one of the longest-running lawsuits in Tar Heel State history centered on the state's obligation under the North Carolina Constitution to provide a "sound basic education" to all students.

Leandro was the original named plaintiff in the case, and a series of eponymous North Carolina Supreme Court opinions have steered the state toward what could be a multibillion-dollar remedy to improve its public education system. He's now waiting alongside millions of residents for the state's justices to release the latest opinion, more than two years after hearing oral argument.

Though the case continues under the moniker of his last name, Leandro said it's not been about him for decades. Instead, it's about the children and grandchildren of his friends who stayed in Hoke County, and the huge number of students who aren't in the top of their class.

"Many, many of my peers, I know for a fact, did not have the same opportunities with certainly the same intelligence levels and the same abilities as kids in Wake County or Mecklenburg County," Leandro said. "And as a result, their lives are different. Their opportunities are more limited. I think, ultimately, that's a terrible thing for the state's future."

While on its face the recent appeal appears to be narrowly focused on the enforceability and calculated cost of a recent remedial plan, the stakes of the opinion could be far-reaching, according to experts and those closely involved in the case.

Experts say the ruling could implicate the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches, as the justices consider whether the trial court has the authority to order the state to implement a remedy for violating students' constitutional rights — and dip into its coffers to pay for it.

The recent appeal also has called into question just how far back in the justices' own precedent they might reach if they choose to unravel any of the high court's prior opinions.

 Money "Is Not The Test"

The lawsuit was filed in May 1994 by several students, families and school boards of education in low-wealth North Carolina counties, alleging the state violated their constitutional rights by not giving them resources for a basic quality of education.

In 1997, the Supreme Court issued "Leandro I," a seminal, near-unanimous ruling penned by then-Chief Justice Burley Mitchell that every student in the state has a constitutional right to a "sound basic education," measured by a set of minimum qualitative standards such as the ability to read and write.

The justices tried to drive home that the case was never about money, Mitchell told Law360 in a recent interview. Funding is just one aspect, and it's not the litmus test for determining the overall quality of the education provided, he said.

"I'm not saying money is not terribly important. It is," Mitchell said. "But it's just, the amount you spend is not the test of whether you're offering a sound basic education. That's as simple as I can say. It is not the test. The test is whether Johnny can read."

That sentiment was echoed by Melanie Dubis, Parker Poe partner and chair of the firm's litigation department. Dubis, a summer law clerk at Parker Poe when the case was first filed, has since led the firm's effort in representing the low-wealth county plaintiffs, including Cumberland, Halifax, Hoke, Robeson and Vance counties.

In the present appeal, even if the justices rule in favor of a remedial plan for improving North Carolina's public education system, the decision isn't necessarily an immediate turnkey for hundreds of millions, or billions, of dollars to flow into the state's school districts, she said.

For example, the state has yet to pass its annual budget, which directly impacts how much money would be allocated under the plan.

It's been four years since a 4-3 Democratic majority in the North Carolina Supreme Court affirmed that a trial court could order the state's executive branch to disburse funds for the first two years of the eight-year plan — totaling at least $5.6 billion — as a remedy for its ongoing constitutional violations.

Before and after that ruling, the trial court has tried numerous times to recalculate the exact dollar figure needed to fund certain action items from years two and three of the plan by taking into account allocations in the state budget.

The case, as it stands now, is more about what the state might be required to do within the remedial plan, a complex remedy with many pieces such as recruiting and developing teachers and principals, Dubis said.

"It wasn't about go spend X amount of dollars, right? It's, once there's a right established in a violation, then that has to be remedied," she said. "And as Robb said, the dollars flow from that."

Two More Decades of Court Battles

Back in state trial court in 2000 after Leandro I, now-retired Superior Court Judge Howard Manning presided over a 14-month bench trial that used Hoke County as the test district. In a lengthy 2002 opinion, the jurist found the state fell short of the standards established in Leandro I.

Over the next 20 years, the case would revisit the state Supreme Court three more times. In the slideshow below, we trace the multi-decade legal journey of the landmark case.


A Leandro decision in 2004 confirmed the state had violated students' right to a sound basic education in Hoke County. A decade and some changes later, the parties agreed to the eight-year plan costing at least $5.6 billion to cure the state's violations, which led to a trial judge's order for a $1.7 billion transfer of state funds to pay for part of the plan.

In a return to the high court in 2022, the justices ruled against Republican lawmaker intervenors who took umbrage with the remedial plan. On remand, a trial court judge recalculated the dollars needed to fund a portion of the plan, ordering $677.8 million in state funding be transferred in light of shortfalls in the 2022 budget.

The high court, on which conservatives held a 5-2 majority after party power flipped during the 2022 midterm elections, accepted the GOP's appeal of the funding order and held oral argument in February 2024. But there has been no ruling since.

When asked about the long wait, a spokesperson for the North Carolina Judicial Branch told Law360 it "does not comment on cases that could come before the courts, pending cases, litigation and/or investigations, or final rulings and opinions."

Divided Theories Muddle Appeal's Outcome

In the decades since the Supreme Court's first two decisions, the authors of those opinions said the case has become muddled. Mitchell, who wrote the 1997 opinion, characterized the long-running litigation as "off track."

While he acknowledged that North Carolina's schools are in crisis, he said the case derailed when it came to finding a remedy for the constitutional violations. Pointing to his opinion in Leandro I, Mitchell said the justices at that time emphasized that any remedy should interfere "as little as possible" with the executive and legislative branches.

Though he doesn't think the trial court erred in ordering the state to provide funding, he said it wasn't a sufficient fix to the problems plaguing the state's public schools. Money, he reiterated, is just one input when it comes to delivering on the promise of a sound basic education.

The intervening Republican legislators have argued on appeal that Judge Manning's earlier rulings only apply to Hoke County, or at most the four other named counties in the lawsuit, rather than all counties across the state.

Former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, who wrote the second Leandro decision in 2004, said he isn't aware of a ruling in the lengthy record that specifically states that every student's constitutional right to a sound basic education statewide was violated. He said that could affect how the justices weigh whether to back the remedial plan.

"I'm 100% a champion of the public school system," he told Law360. "But just from a legal standpoint, I have a lot of questions about how we got to that remedy."

The counties disagree, Dubis said, pointing to a wealth of evidence presented, after the Supreme Court's 2004 opinion, over many months of Judge Manning holding hearings to ensure the state remedied the violation. During those hearings, he called witnesses and admitted additional evidence related to statewide student performance and remedial programs, she said.

The eventual ruling also could weigh in on the separation of power between the state's branches of government, said John Charles Boger, a former constitutional and educational law professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He joined in on a number of amici briefs in support of the plaintiffs.

In this situation, the justices could be wrestling with whether it's appropriate to bypass or weigh in on the General Assembly's authority to appropriate funds when there's been a constitutional violation, and order for the state to redress it, Boger said.

The majority also may be struggling with their overall authority to revisit these questions, as they face nearly three decades of their own precedent, he added. For example, the court could uphold the 1997-era right to a sound basic education, but rule there was never a violation; it could rule the judiciary can't force legislators into a remedial plan and the General Assembly has to find its own solution; it could order the remedy was narrowly tailored to the named plaintiffs, or a number of other outcomes.

"It becomes hard to understand what the court is waiting for unless its position really is, 'We are conflicted about our power to overturn what's been done before,'" Boger said.

On the matter of timing, the retired justices recognized that the posture of the Leandro case today is a far cry from the issues they confronted in the late '90s and early '00s. Orr said he suspects the current justices are struggling to make sense of the case procedurally.

"I don't think they're sitting on it intentionally," he said. "I just think they don't know how to write it."

Christopher Brook of Patterson Harkavy LLP, representing the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Branch of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and several at-risk students, told Law360 that the length of the case and the 2021 remedial plan are crucial bits of context. Brook also sat on the North Carolina Court of Appeals for nearly two years.

That the state and counties came together to strike a deal, which the court approved, isn't a menial consideration, he said, noting it was done after decades of the legislature not acting to ensure a right to a "sound basic" education after Leandro I.

So, for the justices to rule on a fundamental right after prolonged inaction is one way to ensure constitutional obligations aren't just "a paper promise with nothing behind it," Brook said.

"This is not the judiciary just ordering a remedy without participation from the parties, you know? This is instead the judiciary signing off essentially on a hard-struck bargain between adversarial parties," he said.

--Editing by Tim Ruel. Graphic by Jason Mallory.

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