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Does School Finance Litigation Cause Taxpayer Revolt? Serrano and Proposition 13

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Isaac Martin
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Abstract

An influential theory argues that court-ordered school finance equalization undermines support for public schools. Residents of wealthy school districts who cannot keep their tax revenues for their own school districts may vote to limit school funding altogether. Proponents of this theory point to Serrano v. Priest, a 1977 decision of the California Supreme Court that mandated equalization of school financing and was followed almost immediately by Proposition 13, a ballot initiative to limit the local property tax. I test the theory that these two events were causally related by using hierarchical models to analyze voters within school districts. I find no evidence that opposition to school finance equalization contributed to the tax revolt. Claims about the perverse consequences of school finance litigation should be greeted with skepticism.

Type
Articles of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 525 - 558
Copyright
© 2006 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The research for this article was supported in part by the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment. I would like to thank Peter Brownell for the crucial suggestion that enabled me to carry out the hierarchical analysis, and John H. Evans, Herbert Kritzer, April Linton, Stephanie Mudge, Kwai Ng, Michael Paris, John Skrentny, and several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on the analysis and the manuscript.

References

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