Funding the Fourth Worst School System in the U.S.

In August of 2025, the Maricopa County Superior Court released their 114-page decision in Glendale Elementary School District et al v. State of Az et al, the newest case in a long series of cases about the terrible school funding in Arizona. This case has gone on for years with massive work by attorneys and thousands of pages of documents, exhibits, and arguments. A two-week trial was held in May 2024. This lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of Arizona’s system for funding the capital needs of Arizona’s K-12 public schools – again.

The AZ Constitution says that education is a right and the responsibility of the state. The legislature makes the policy decisions on how best to allocate the state’s resources to meet the public schools’ capital and other needs. The court can only decide if the system set up by the legislature meets the constitutional mandate. The Court in this case ruled that the current public-school capital finance system does not meet the constitutional minimum standards established by the Arizona Supreme Court.

Read the rest of Secular AZ Legal Director Dianne Post's analysis here. 

THIS WEEK'S NEWS

Victory... for now:  This morning the Supreme Court declined, without comment, to hear a request to overturn its 2015 landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide (Obergefell v. Hodges). The petition was filed by Kim Davis, a thrice-divorced former Kentucky clerk who's so concerned with the biblical sanctity of marriage that she refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses and was ordered to pay damages. The court's denial offers some relief for LGBTQIA+ people. Many legal experts were not surprised by the decision, as the case was seen as a long shot, but the case still underscores the need to remain vigilant about future attempts to reverse the precedent. 

Justice Thomas, in particular, has made it clear that he wants to revisit Obergefell. A lawyer for Ms. Davis asserted that Obergefell was “egregiously wrong” and said his organization, Liberty Counsel, would continue to work to reverse it. ( A reminder that Americans support marriage equality by 2:1 margin today (65% favor), with Dems  at 83% Independents at 70%, Republicans at 47%; only white evangelical s, and Latino Protestants have majority opposition, according to the latest PRRI American Values survey. Read more. 

Shady and oppressive: The Arizona GOP is trying to restrict Arizonans' reproductive rights by defending abortion restrictions — including 24-hour waiting periods, a telehealth ban — and required ultrasounds, in court. This is despite the voter-approved (by 62%!) Proposition 139 enshrining a right to abortion access. No-one will be surprised to learn that the witnesses called by the legal teams for Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Stephen Montenegro are vocal abortion foes. For example, witnesses have included a professor of internal medicine from another state with zero experience providing abortion care and no understanding of what impact the laws have on patients, a pro-life activist who is not a doctor, and a psychiatric nurse who claimed that women under 25 aren't able to determine what constitutes a reliable source of information about abortion... oh, and has been paid tens of thousands of dollars to testify in favor of abortion ban laws in other states. Read more. 

Take note, AZ Department of Education:  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Galveston Independent School District for refusing to display the 10 Commandments, as required by a new, controversial state law. GISD voted to wait until legal appeals regarding the law's constitutionality are decided before installing the displays, citing federal law and court precedents on church/state separation. Paxton argues the district is ignoring America's Christian heritage. The situation creates a political and legal trap for school districts, forcing them to choose between obeying the state and upholding the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, diverting resources from education to litigation.  The district must decide if they’d rather get sued by the state or by First Amendment experts. The options for public schools: waste time and money that should be going to educate students on lawsuits, or promote Christianity in the classroom. Neither is acceptable. Read more. 

Know your religious extremists. New from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism: the Christian Identify (CI) movement is showing up in today's antisemitism. CI is a fringe, white supremacist religion that asserts, among other things, that white people are the true biblical Israelites. It teaches that Jews are literal descendants of Satan, and anyone not white lacks a soul. Developed in the U.S., CI infused its doctrine with a militant brand of theology, believing the End Times will involve a violent race war. Though its physical presence has diminished since its peak in the 1980s and 90s, CI remains an ideological influence on violent far-right movements and is used to justify hate and domestic terrorism. Read more. 

There's no hate quite like Christian love.  The government shutdown led to the lapse of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for millions, as the Trump administration has repeatedly refused to fully fund the program. Despite two federal judges ordering the administration to use contingency funds to cover benefits, the administration has appealed multiple times, this morning to SCOTUS, creating chaos, uncertainty and suffering. However, lest you think this crisis is a side effect of the shut down, it stems from a broader Republican strategy to use government funding impasses to extract cuts to social safety net programs, including SNAP. States scrambled to issue partial benefits, while courts forced the administration to eventually begin distributing full November payments, highlighting the political weaponization of food aid during the shutdown. So while this cruelty from the pRo-LiFe party, may feel sudden, it’s anything but accidental. Read more.