A timeline of events in the Leandro lawsuit, more formally known as Hoke County Board of Education, et. al. vs. State of North Carolina and State Board of Education:
1994: Schools and families sue North Carolina
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Hoke, Halifax, Cumberland, Vance and Robeson county school boards and families sue North Carolina for not providing them with the resources to provide an adequate education. They allege insufficient funding and inequities between what wealthy counties can provide to their schools and what lower-wealth counties can.
1997: North Carolina Supreme Court's first ruling in favor
The North Carolina Supreme Court agrees that the North Carolina Constitution guarantees a “sound basic education” for all of the state’s schoolchildren (called the “Leandro 1” decision). The court did not determine whether the state was meeting that obligation and referred that matter to a lower court.
2002: Superior Court finds the state is not meeting its obligation
After 14 months of trial, Superior Court Judge Howard Manning found the state is not providing a sound basic education. Manning argued the state was not providing adequate oversight of the schools that had low test scores, but did not rule on whether funding was insufficient. Manning ruled that the state must a have high-quality teacher in every classroom, a well-prepared principal in every school, adequate resources and provide pre-kindergarten for all children at-risk of not being prepared to succeed academically.
2004: North Carolina Supreme Court's second ruling in favor of Hoke County
The North Carolina Supreme Court affirms most of Manning’s ruling but determines the court cannot require pre-kindergarten because state law does not require school for children younger than 7 years old. The court recommends deferring to the state’s executive and legislative branches to solve the shortcomings.
2015: Superior Court judge retires, says state still not meeting its obligations
Manning retires after years of status hearings and continued findings the state was still not providing a sound basic education to all of North Carolina’s schoolchildren. He called for a "plan of action."
2016: New Superior Court judge appointed
Retired Judge W. David Lee is appointed to handle the case in Superior Court. Two years later, Lee ordered WestEd, an independent consultant, to recommend ways for NC to comply with the two rulings.
2019: Completed study is released
WestEd releases its report — more than 300 pages along with hundreds of pages of smaller reports — with the help of the Learning Policy Institute and the North Carolina State University Friday Institute.
2020: Superior Court orders a plan
Judge Lee signs a consent order saying that all parties agree to the facts of the case and need to take systemic action and agree to develop a plan of action within 60 days
March 2021: Parties submit a joint plan
After COVID-19 delays, plaintiffs and the state submit a 57-page report to implement many of the recommendations in the WestEd report, along with many other ideas. The total cost is at least $5.6 billion.
June 2021: Superior Court approves the plan
Judge Lee approves the plan submitted by the parties and orders periodic updates on progress made towards implementing it.
Nov. 8, 2021: A brief order enforcing the plan
Judge Lee orders the state to fund the plan through a transfer of state funds. A Court of Appeals panel stops the order, which has now been appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
A week later, the General Assembly passed a new state budget, which was signed into law by then Gov. Roy Cooper, that funded about $760 million of the more than $1.7 billion called for, according to analysts.
Nov. 30, 2021: NC Court of appeals blocks funding for education plan
In a 2-1 ruling, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled that Lee's order requiring funding the Leadro plan through a transfer of state funds could not be made without lawmaker approval.
Court of Appeals judges Chris Dillon and Jefferson Griffin ruled Lee, as a judge, can't order an appropriation of funds, writing that it would violate the separation of powers among the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, as outlined in the North Carolina Constitution.
Dec. 2021: Families, school boards appeal block of Leandro plan to NC Supreme Court
Five low-wealth school districts and families whose children attend them ask the North Carolina Supreme Court to review a decision that blocked the $1.7 billion education funding transfer.
March 2022: NC Supreme Court considered another appeal & Judge Lee removed from Leandro case
The North Carolina Supreme Court agrees to consider a new appeal in the lawsuit once a state Superior Court has examined the impact of the new state budget on the plan in the then 28-year-old lawsuit.
Additionally, NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby ordered Judge Lee off the case. Lee, a Democrat, was replaced by Republican judge Michael Robinson. Judge Lee said a week later that he did not ask to be removed from overseeing the lawsuit, and learned about his replacement at the same time as everyone else.
Robinson then called for state officials to provide an analysis on how much the new state budget contributed to the Leandro plan.
April 2022: State estimates nearly $1B of the Leandro Plan has been funded
In 2022, then Chief Deputy Director of the State Budget, Kristen Walker, said the state had funded $958.3 million of the $1.75 billion required by the Leandro Plan for 2022 and 2023.
About a week after Walker's sworn affidavit, leaders in the General Assembly said they believed they were providing a "sound basic education," but critics contended that their actions fell billions of dollars short.
Later that month, Judge Michael Robinson said the state needed to find the remaining $785.1 million without transferring state funds. Robinson did not lay out an alternative for leaders to pay for it.
July 2022: Schools and lawmakers file first arguments in lawsuit appeal
Lawmakers who intervened in the case, Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger and then NC House Speaker Tim Moore, both Republicans, argued that courts can't force the General Assembly to spend money or approve policies required by the plan.
Plaintiffs, however, saw things differently, adding that "in the intervening eighteen years, an entirely new generation of North Carolina school children, especially those at-risk and socio-economically disadvantaged, were denied a fundamental constitutional right.”
Prominent business leaders also supported funding the Leandro plan, writing a 52-page friend-of-the-court filing with the NC Supreme Court, arguing that the remaining money should be transferred from state coffers to three state agencies.
October 2023: NC Supreme Court takes up another issue on Leandro lawsuit
A majority of the justices said they would hear arguments on whether a lower court had the authority to decide in April how short lawmakers were on funding the court-ordered education plan.
The November 2022 order had asked a superior court judge to make that determination, but lawmakers had argued the judge had no jurisdiction to that because the state Supreme Court had decided in March to take the case back up.
December 2023: Leandro lawsuit gets news NC Supreme Court date
The North Carolina Supreme Court set a date of Feb. 22, 2024, for oral arguments in the case.
February 2024: Judges hear Leandro arguments in court
Justices asked questions about recent and decades-old court decisions, what is and isn’t settled in the case, and what would happen if more families decided to sue in the future during more than an hour of oral arguments.
Some justices wondered whether more families should be a part of the unwieldy, 30-year-old lawsuit before the plan can proceed. A ruling is expected in the next few months.
April 2026: NC Supreme Court throws out Leandro plan, ending lawsuit
The court threw out that plan on Thursday, April 2, 2026, in a 4-3 decision. The ruling invalidates the last decade's worth of actions in the case. But instead of remanding the lawsuit for further action on the claims of the original five school boards that sued — Cumberland, Hoke, Halifax, Vance and Robeson — the court dismissed the case entirely without giving parties the ability to re-file.
Justices in the majority tossed the case in part because they contended that today’s education system has changed too much in the past 20 years and that the lack of any current students as plaintiffs means no plaintiffs have their rights at issue.
WRAL Education Insider Emily Walkehorst & WRAL multiplatform producer Joseph Ochoa contributed to this timeline.