Justices question Minneapolis resident’s right to sue over teacher contract

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 the 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 of “last in, first out”: that is, the most recently hired teacher will be the first to be let go during budget cuts. 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 court 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’s 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 currently reviewing the legality of the contract provision itself.

Court arguments

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

“This case is about when a mere taxpayer should be permitted to insert themselves into a collective bargaining agreement that’s been duly negotiated and entered into between a public school board and an exclusive representative of teachers,” he said.

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 Minnesota’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.

“No, Your Honor,” Sullivan replied. 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.

“Ms. Clapp is challenging the expenditures that will be made and are being made to undertake the excising of the least senior teacher based on certain races and ethnicities, and the deprioritization of more senior teachers based on certain races and ethnicities,” he said.

The justices seemed skeptical of his arguments, and repeatedly asked him what made this case different from the taxpayer standing issue in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Hunt, the voting rights case decided in August.

“If we agree with you,” Justice Anne McKeig said, “I’m trying to think of a circumstance where the taxpayer wouldn’t have standing.”

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.

“I think it’s a valid concern, but it does seem to me that that’s a policy issue,” she said. “That’s the very thing that we said in our recent decision in Hunt: That doesn’t get you there for taxpayer standing.” 

Potential impacts

The implications of this case could go far beyond the Minneapolis Public Schools. 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.” Those concerns could apply particularly to their unions, the groups wrote, “given the recent animus towards law enforcement and, in particular, law enforcement labor agreements. … Taxpayers would essentially have the ability to re-write collective bargaining agreements through the courts.”

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 school district have been quite rare in recent years. The union’s brief states that as far as it is aware, the Minneapolis Public Schools’ last teacher layoff occurred in 2010, when it discharged a Japanese language instructor citing a “lack of pupils” in her classes. 

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 who have not yet achieved tenure. Those teachers then have the right to apply for reassigned jobs at other school buildings.

That process played out this spring, when the district “excessed” 452 teachers — that is, cut them from their specific school positions, but not from the district altogether — as Minneapolis Public Schools faced a $110 million budget deficit. Though 22 percent of all Minneapolis Public Schools teachers are people of color, 31 percent of the excessed teachers were, according to district data. Many of the excessed teachers found positions elsewhere in the district. 

In the end, 50 teachers were “discharged,” or lost their positions altogether. Of those, 36 percent were teachers of color. But none of those teachers were tenured. And therefore, Minneapolis Public Schools 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. A court spokesperson said that on average, it takes the Minnesota Supreme Court 4.5 months to decide a case.