The Spirit of Serrano: Past, Present and Future

A decades-long school funding revolution continues in the United States. The litigation sparked by the Supreme Court of California\u27s 1971 decision in Serrano v. Priest continues to reshape the legal, political, and educational landscape in the United States, affecting the lives of children, parents, educators, and taxpayers throughout the nation. Serrano-inspired lawsuits have transformed school funding policies nationwide, resulting in billions of dollars in new funding and a notable redistribution of resources among school districts. Serrano-inspired litigation has changed public schools in many states to a degree second only to the transformation that followed Brown v. Board of Education. To understand school funding litigation in the present and to better anticipate future developments, a review of the past, present, and likely future of school funding litigation is invaluable. This article briefly reviews and discusses the past, present and likely future of Serrano-inspired school funding litigation