Minnesota Supreme Court skeptical that policy protecting teachers of color hurts Minneapolis taxpayer

When can a taxpayer sue a school district over its teacher union contract?

That’s the central question in a case the Minnesota Supreme Court heard Tuesday. And it’s a question that could have wide-ranging impacts for public-sector unions throughout the state — from educator unions to police federations.

The case, Clapp v. Cox, began after Minneapolis Public Schools settled the teachers’ contract to end a three-week strike in 2022. As part of the new bargaining agreement, the district and union agreed on new provisions aimed at retaining teachers of color.

Traditionally, job cuts in schools follow seniority order: “last in, first out.” Since teachers of color are more likely to be recently hired, these cuts disproportionately affect them. The language in the 2022 contract says that during a process of staff reductions or layoffs, the district can go out of seniority order to retain an “underrepresented” teacher over the “next least senior teacher.”

Minneapolis resident Deborah Clapp filed a lawsuit, challenging the contract as an illegal use of her tax dollars. A district judge dismissed her case, saying she had failed to demonstrate her standing. But the Court of Appeals reversed that decision and reinstated the case in a ruling written by Judge Theodora Gaïtas. (Gaïtas, who has since joined the Minnesota Supreme Court, recused herself from the high court case.)

The Minnesota Supreme Court announced it would hear the case to review the questions of whether Clapp had standing to sue as a taxpayer and whether her lawsuit is “ripe,” or timely, before the contract provision has been enacted. The court is not reviewing the legality of the contract provision itself.

Attorney Tim Sullivan, arguing for the school district, told the Supreme Court that Clapp had not met the threshold for standing in this case.

Though Minnesota has a longstanding doctrine allowing taxpayers to sue over what they believe is illegal use of their tax dollars under certain circumstances, Sullivan argued this doctrine did not apply to Clapp. He repeatedly pointed to a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling from August, Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Hunt, clarifying the law on taxpayer standing. In that ruling, which upheld the state’s law restoring voting rights to people convicted of a felony, Chief Justice Natalie Hudson wrote that taxpayer standing may be recognized “only when the central dispute involves alleged unlawful disbursements of public funds.”

Sullivan argued that Clapp’s central dispute with the school district was about the policies in the contract, not any incidental money that might be spent to put them into practice. He said that the law was designed for taxpayers to protect themselves from the injury of an increased tax burden resulting from illegal government expenses. There would be “virtually no limit” to taxpayers’ ability to file legal challenges to government policies if they can sue over the incidental funds used to implement policies, he said.

Justice Paul Thissen asked if the school district had spent money to implement the new contract provisions. Sullivan said no. Minneapolis Public Schools has not laid off a teacher in 14 years, he said. Justice Karl Procaccini asked who would have standing to challenge the legality of the new contract provisions if taxpayers did not.

“If the language were to be utilized in a manner that a teacher believed that they were being discriminated against on the basis of a protected characteristic, that teacher would have standing to challenge the application of the language,” Sullivan said.

Michael Bekesha, an attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based conservative foundation Judicial Watch, argued on Clapp’s behalf.The justices repeatedly asked him what made this case different from the taxpayer standing issue in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Hunt.

Bekesha argued that the contract provision was illegal, and therefore any funds used to implement it were being illegally spent. “The Minnesota equal protection guarantee prohibits governments from making decisions, from taking actions, exclusively, only, based on race,” Bekesha argued.

Hudson suggested that Clapp’s disagreements with the school district focused on policy, not funds.

“That’s the very thing that we said in our recent decision in Hunt: That doesn’t get you there for taxpayer standing,” she said.

A flurry of groups submitted amicus briefs in support of the school district, including unions, police professional associations, and the Minnesota School Boards Association. In one amicus brief, Teamsters Local 320 and the St. Paul Police Federation wrote that leaving the Court of Appeals ruling intact would “lead to a flood of taxpayer challenges to collective bargaining agreements whenever a taxpayer disagrees with or does not like a bargained-for provision of the agreement.”

But the actual impacts of the new contract provision on the Minneapolis Public Schools may be minimal. In another amicus brief, Education Minnesota, the state’s largest educators union, explained that layoffs in the Minneapolis district have been rare in recent years.

Only tenured teachers have rights during the layoff and recall process. Under the collective bargaining agreement, before layoffs can happen, the district must discharge tier 1 and tier 2 teachers, who do not have a full professional license, and any probationary teachers. Those teachers then have the right to apply for jobs at other school buildings.

That process played out this spring, when the district “excessed” 452 teachers — cutting them from their positions but not from the district — as Minneapolis Public Schools faced a $110 million budget deficit. Though 22% of teachers are people of color, 31% of the excessed teachers were people of color, according to district data. Many of the excessed teachers got positions in the district.

In the end, 50 teachers were “discharged,” or lost their positions. Of those, 36% were teachers of color. But none of those teachers were tenured. And therefore, the district told Sahan Journal, the layoff provisions in the contract did not apply during this spring’s budget cuts.

The Supreme Court has no deadline for when it could issue a ruling.

About the partnership

This story comes to you from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for a free newsletter to receive Sahan’s stories in your inbox.