We're Suing to Force West Virginia to Fund Public Schools

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia (ACLU-WV)
today notified the State of West Virginia of its intent to file suit on behalf of a class of Lincoln County students, alleging that the State's persistent underfunding of public schools violates the "thorough and efficient" education guarantee and the equal protection provisions of the West Virginia Constitution.

The notice, delivered under West Virginia Code § 55-17-3, was sent to state officials including the Speaker of the House of Delegates, the President of the Senate, the State Auditor, the Tax Commissioner, the State Treasurer, the West Virginia Department of Education, the State Board of Education, and the School Building Authority, along with Lincoln County officials named as necessary parties.

Nearly fifty years ago, Lincoln County students brought the landmark case Pauley v. Kelly,
which the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals used to establish that a thorough and
efficient education is a fundamental constitutional right. In the 1982 Recht decision that
followed, a court documented in exhaustive detail how Lincoln County's schools fell short of that standard — and directed the State to fix it.

More than forty years later, the ACLU-WV says Lincoln County students receive a worse
education, across many metrics, than their parents and grandparents did — and that by some measures the schools are worse off than the system a court already found unconstitutional.

“In West Virginia, each and every child is guaranteed the right to a thorough and efficient
education; a promise enshrined in our constitution since the State’s founding in 1863,” ACLU-WV Legal Director Aubrey Sparks said.

“West Virginia made this promise concrete in 1982, when a court defined, in greater detail than any court in the country before or since, what a thorough and efficient education requires, and what falls short. Today, despite the passage of nearly fifty years since this right was first made concrete in the historic Recht decision, Lincoln County students are receiving a lower quality education than what their parents, and their grandparents, received before them. The West Virginia Constitution does not and should not allow this profoundly important constitutional right to wither and die on the vine as the result of ongoing financial neglect by the Defendants,” Sparks said.

The notice describes a school funding system that fails students statewide, with particularly dire effects in Lincoln County where current funding provides basic aid that is wholly insufficient to deliver an adequate education. Special education receives only minimal state funding — far less than amounts previously deemed unconstitutional. Counties are left to bridge the gap, and their ability to do so depends on local property values, producing steep inequities. The gap in per-pupil spending between wealthy and poor counties is now more than three times larger than when that same disparity was declared unconstitutional. The staffing formula often funds fewer positions per 1,000 students than the level found insufficient in 1982.

In Lincoln County, those failures translate into shortages of certified and experienced teachers, underfunded special education programs, aging facilities, and unnecessary school closures. In 2021, the Duval PK-8 school was condemned for structural issues; for five years, students in grades 2–8 have been taught in a former career-center building with no exterior windows or natural light, in rooms that were once automotive bays and welding shops. During the 2024–2025 school year, not a single Lincoln County school met the State's literacy proficiency standards.

The ACLU-WV's notice makes clear that while legal responsibility for the underfunding remains to be determined by a court, the moral responsibility is clear — and does not fall equally on every official named, some of whom have themselves publicly urged the State to meet its obligations.

The lawsuit will seek declaratory, injunctive, and mandamus relief — asking a court to declare the State's school funding system unconstitutional and to order the State to meet its duty to provide a thorough and efficient education.