State to Ask Supreme Court to Overturn Claremont School Funding Rulings

The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office plans to ask the state Supreme Court to overturn its two landmark Claremont school funding rulings from the 1990s, arguing they are an improper reading of the state constitution. 

In a filing to the court Tuesday, the Department of Justice appears to be setting the groundwork to argue that the amount the state funds its public schools is a political question for the Legislature and not one determined by the judicial branch or dictated by the constitution.

Those arguments, if successful, could end decades of court precedent and diminish the state’s financial obligations to public schools. They came Tuesday as part of the state’s appeal of a 2024 Rockingham Superior Court ruling that found that New Hampshire’s school funding formula is unfair to local taxpayers and unconstitutional. 

Reacting to the filing, Zack Sheehan, executive director of the New Hampshire School Funding Fairness Project, said the arguments underscored the importance of the case. 

“For years, some lawmakers and state leaders have said they were not trying to overturn Claremont,” Sheehan said in a statement Wednesday. “In this filing, the state is formally asking the Supreme Court to do exactly that.”

The Claremont decisions, issued in 1993 and 1997, established that the New Hampshire Legislature has a constitutional obligation to provide an “adequate” public education by funding its schools. The Supreme Court majority drew that conclusion from Part II, Article 83 of the state constitution, which describes the “duty” of legislators “to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries and public schools.”

The rulings forced major changes in the state’s school funding formula and created a standard that underpins the system today. But not all have been satisfied with the response. In 2019 and 2022, school districts and local taxpayers filed two separate lawsuits arguing lawmakers have not gone far enough to meet those funding obligations.

Last July, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of school districts in the first of those lawsuits, Contoocook Valley School District v. State of New Hampshire, finding that the state’s “base” payments to public schools — currently $4,266 per student per year — are insufficient to provide an adequate education and directing the Legislature to raise those amounts.

But the high court has not yet decided the second lawsuit, Rand v. State of New Hampshire. In that case, New Hampshire property taxpayers argue the current school funding model relies too heavily on local taxes, creating unfair tax rate disparities between wealthy and poor towns. 

Ruling in that case last August, Rockingham County Superior Court Judge David Ruoff sided with the taxpayers and found that the state’s low funding levels “effectively converts” local property taxes into an unconstitutionally disproportionate state tax. 

In the notice of appeal Tuesday, New Hampshire Solicitor General Anthony Galdieri indicated that the state disagrees with Ruoff’s decision and laid out 13 legal questions the state would like the Supreme Court to consider on appeal. 

Among those questions is whether the court should find that Part II, Article 83 does not actually mandate the state meet a qualitative standard of education or meet a specific financial benchmark, a ruling that would overturn the Claremont decisions. 

The state is also asking the court to consider whether how the state funds an adequate education is a “non-justiciable political question.” Doing so could pre-empt future lawsuits over the state’s funding models.

In its other questions for appeal, the department indicated it will seek to reverse Ruoff’s ruling by challenging his determination of how much adequate education actually costs per pupil, his reliance on plaintiffs’ expert testimony to determine that number, and his finding that municipal property taxes should be treated as state taxes when assessing their proportionality. 

The state’s push to overturn Claremont dovetails with efforts by Republican lawmakers this year to undermine the rulings. House Bill 1815 would change state statute to declare the responsibility to provide an adequate education to be shared between local school districts and the state, which could cause courts to find that New Hampshire schools are already sufficiently funded. 

The sponsor of that bill, Rep. Bob Lynn, a Windham Republican and former Supreme Court chief justice, has argued the Claremont decisions were wrongly decided.