Lawyer for students calls California court's landmark tenure decision unfair
By Alex Dobuzinskis
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An attorney for students in a landmark case on teacher tenure said on Friday that a California appeals court decision upholding protections for ineffective instructors failed to properly consider harm done to poor and minority students.
The decision on Thursday by a three-judge panel of the state's Second Appellate District Court dealt a blow to education reform groups that sued on behalf of nine students.
Students Matter, the group behind the closely watched suit, has vowed to appeal to the California Supreme Court.
"We think we will win the final round because we are on the right side of this case and of history," Theodore Boutrous Jr., an attorney for the student plaintiffs, said in a conference call with reporters.
Frank Wells, a spokesman for the California Teachers Association union, said the state Supreme Court is unlikely to consider the appeal.
"They've got a pretty high hurdle here to demonstrate that these (appellate) judges were incorrect," he said.
The state's highest court is expected to make a decision this summer on whether to take the case.
The suit contends teacher tenure puts poor and minority students at a disproportionately greater risk of being taught by ineffective instructors.
A school administrator in the case testified that a so-called "dance of the lemons" all too often means that incompetent teachers who cannot be fired wind up at schools at the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum.
Boutrous, who previously was successful in a court case that overturned California's gay marriage ban, said the decision is flawed because the appeals court failed to properly apply the equal protection provision of the California constitution.
In 2014, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge in the case, known as Vergara v. California, found that teacher tenure protections violated student rights.
Then-U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan hailed the ruling as a "mandate" to fix problems, but the decision was put on hold pending appeal.
In a 36-page ruling, the appeals court on Thursday found that evidence presented at the trial "highlighted likely drawbacks" to job protections for teachers.
But the unanimous ruling said the lower court went too far in finding those employment rules violated the state constitution.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Sara Catania and Meredith Mazzilli)
