A federal judge last week ruled that children in this country actually don't have, they
don't have a right to learn how to read.
I mean, if you really drill down on the ruling, that's what it is.
I think what bothered me about this, about this story was you have this judge that had
the ability to really to say that, you know, there are some rights that we need to protect.
Right.
And one of them should be the right to get an education, the right to be able to read
and instead gives us all this flowery language.
Gee whiz, illiteracy is a terrible thing.
Illiteracy is something we got to stop, but I'm not going to show any courage and find
a way to make that happen.
Now understand, this judge did not, he could, this judge could have ruled favorably without
ever going down the path that he said he had to go down.
Pick it up from there.
Well, you know, they wanted to make this as a, it's a more of a moral issue, not a legal
issue.
But, but really if you think about this, because the, the people who brought this were representing
children who are arguing that we were provided a substandard education that did not prepare
us, one to pass the mandated tests for public schools and two, to be productive members
of society.
You failed us.
Now on the legal side, they should have argued, okay, first and foremost, we don't have an
option to not pay taxes for schools.
We pay for that.
It comes out of our checks.
There's number one.
Number two, you're legally required to send your children to school.
And so if I'm legally required to pay for it, legally required to send my kids to it,
you should be legally required to provide some kind of substantive education such as
learning how to read.
Yeah.
And the judge specifically says, you know, as plaintiffs point out voting, participating
meaningfully in civic life and accessing justice requires some measure of literacy.
But that doesn't necessarily make access to literacy a fundamental right.
Yeah.
What's bothering, what's bothering me about this is they did, the judge didn't even have
to go there.
Yeah.
The judge did not have to go to a fundamental right argument.
He could have mandated, look, you know, it's just like busing.
I'm mandating that this take place because you're failing to do your job, not based on
any type of, you know, fact that they're, that we're giving, that we're reviewing this
from the standpoint of this being a fundamental right.
There, there was no need to get there.
Now either one or two things happened, either the, either the people who brought the case
kind of screwed the pooch and, and, and pushed it that way.
At which time the judge could have said, well, you know, you've got another way you can come
at this.
Or the judge said, well, you know, I'm going to say all these, I mean, listen to this.
This is the judge, plainly literacy and the opportunity to obtain it is of incalculable
importance.
This is the judge, judge Murphy, judge Stephen Murphy, US district court, and it goes on
to say like, oh, this is awful.
It's awful that these kids don't have an education.
But rather than me being creative and rather than me doing something that there is another
way to get to it, he, he chooses, well, I'm going to, I'm going to save myself.
I'm going to say that they're asking me to determine that education is a fundamental
right.
Didn't have to go that far.
Could have gotten this another way.
And a 40 page opinion is what it was.
40 pages where he's trying to say I so support your literacy.
Yeah.
yeah.
To me it almost is reminiscent of the, the prosecutors with the, the Baker who didn't
want to make the cake for the gay wedding.
That would have been a slam dunk case if the, the...
The lawyering had been right.
Yeah.
And it seems like the same thing happened here because this, you could've gotten what
you wanted out of this case, 100%.
There's no question.
There's all kinds of mandates they can come up with.
They could have said, look, here are the standards.
You're violating the standards.
I don't have to get to the issue of whether this falls in any kind of suspect classification.
I don't have to get into fundamental rights.
I can make you do this anyway.
So it was either the lawyers that blew it.
Even if they did, if this judge really wanted to accomplish some equity, he could've gotten
there.
And I think that's what bothers me about this, it's just nonsense.
It's, it's like his opinion was written because sometime I want to maybe on a higher court
and I want to make it look like I really, really cared about this.
And hopefully at that point someone's going to say, well, you know what, if you cared,
you weren't smart enough to accomplish it.