Constitutional Rights #1
Right to Literacy
4.25.20
Do American students have a ‘fundamental right to literacy’? That is a right to access to skills deemed “essential for the basic exercise of other fundamental rights and liberties, most importantly participation in our political system.” According to the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 opinion handed down on Thursday, Ap. 23rd, they do and they have standing to sue the state to enforce that right. That right to literacy is described as, “... an education sufficient to provide access to a foundational level of literacy — the degree of comprehension needed for participation in our democracy," according to the majority opinion.
At issue is the concept of “substantive due process”, as opposed to “procedural due process”. According to Wikipedia, “substantive due process protects individuals against majoritarian policy enactments that exceed the limits of governmental authority: courts may find that a majority's enactment is not law and cannot be enforced as such, regardless of whether the processes of enactment and enforcement were actually fair.”
Also at issue will be the concept of “penumbra” or ‘shadows’ cast by enumerated rights that, by definition, must also be rights in order for the underlying enumerated right to be viable. This concept appears in Justice William O. Douglas’s opinion in “Griswold v. Connecticut”.
It should be noted that conservative interpretations of the law run contrary to substantive due process and penumbra. It will be important to keep that in mind, as this case progresses. The Court of Appeals sent this case back to the court of original jurisdiction with instructions on what it must now do.
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