School Fund Suit Starts

A federal trial challenging Alabama’s school-funding formula started Monday in Huntsville before Judge Lynwood Smith. The suit was filed two years ago by parents in rural north Alabama counties who claim that state funding for the public education system is based on a discriminatory formula that includes the lowest property-tax rate in the country.

“This tax system disadvantages low-income citizens and poor, rural counties,” the complaint said. “Plaintiffs are injured by the racially discriminatory property tax restrictions in the Alabama Constitution, which impede their ability and the ability of their elected representatives to raise state and local revenues adequately to fund the public services they need, including public education.”

The suit seeks a judgment ruling that the property tax restrictions in the Alabama Constitution violate the Civil Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. It also seeks an injunction prohibiting future use of the funding formula.

The plaintiffs want the Legislature to put in place an educational funding system that is “free of the purposefully racially discriminatory barriers.”

Attorneys for the state have denied the allegations in court documents and said that many conclusions of the challengers “do not take into account significant increases in Alabama state and local property taxes as the result of reappraisals.”

The state is represented by Drayton Nabers, who served as state finance director from January 2003 to June 2004, when he was appointed chief justice of the state Supreme Court by former Gov. Bob Riley. Nabers now works for Maynard Cooper & Gale PC in Birmingham.

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