Serrano v. Priest

The 1971 case of Serrano v. Priest-known commonly as Serrano I-marked the first major decision in a state supreme court that struck down a state educational funding system as unconstitutional. In Serrano I, the Supreme Court of California ruled that the state's school funding system violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In a footnote, the court mentioned that the state's funding practices also violated the California state constitution's equal protection clause.

In Serrano I, the Supreme Court of California acknowledged that the state's public school general fund financing structure resulted in large variations in per-pupil expenditures and depended largely on a school district's property tax base. The court explained that these kinds of tax-base disparities resulted in inequalities in ...