2000: Godinez v. Davis wins nearly $1 billion for new schools in California's urban districts

In 1999, California’s urban school districts struggled with crowding that forced students to compete for desks in classrooms and attend school in staggered sessions year-round. To help, the state’s voters had just approved a school bond raising $9.1 billion to use with local funds to build new schools.  

But civil rights lawyers Connie Rice, Molly Munger, and Steve English noticed that under existing state rules, most of the new money was going to districts with new housing developments in fast-growing suburban areas, instead of the most crowded school districts. 

The State Allocation Board responsible for distributing state school facilities aid had a long practice of fulfilling applications in the order they had been submitted. Also, under its rules, districts had to have ready school sites and fully developed construction plans before submitting applications. In fast-growing urban districts with crowded schools like Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, and Garden Grove, this first-come, first-served approach was a real obstacle. 

The existing density of the areas meant it took considerable time for these districts to acquire school sites. Construction planning was also more complicated and time-consuming. Meanwhile, the suburban districts had land and faced fewer planning hurdles.  

The bond measure did give priority to the districts with the most crowded classrooms, but the agency’s interpretation preserved the first-come, first-served rule. It looked like most, if not all, of the new money from the bond would be earmarked before the urban districts could even apply for it. The lawyers needed a way to show the problem, not tell it. 

“We had an idea that if we could put all of it on a map, we could see if urban areas were getting [a fair share of] the money,” Munger told the Daily Journal, a California legal news site.  

So, they talked to mapping experts in the geography department at Cal State Northridge and began plotting data from dozens of sources, using geolocation as a tool for legal argument. The resulting maps showed the funding disparity in full color. 

In March 2000, English, Munger, and Rice filed the landmark Godinez v. Davis on behalf of a group of students, several community groups, and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), claiming a statewide pattern that let high-income, low-diversity districts get disproportionately more money and build new schools faster. They asked the court to freeze bond fund allocation until distribution could be reconfigured according to need. 

At the time, LAUSD, which served more than 700,000 students, needed 150 new schools, but it had completed applications for fewer than 10. Meanwhile, the Twain Harte-Long Barn Union Elementary School District in Tuolumne County had received more than $5 million in school construction bond funds since 1989, even as its enrollment of 752 grew by just four students in that period. 

"This is not just about L.A. Unified," Rice told the Los Angeles Times. "This is about the state and an unconstitutional allocation system." 

The court made a preliminary ruling favoring the plaintiffs, and the allocation board moved to settle. The agency agreed to reserve funding to let crowded districts complete applications in process. LAUSD received approximately $1 billion in bond money. Other bond measures helped bring the number of new schools to more than 130.

Godinez v. Davis was part of a nationwide wave of litigation combating race discrimination in school resource distribution. Less than two months after it was filed, the ACLU of Southern California filed its own suit spotlighting substandard conditions for students of color, including poorly trained teachers and lack of textbooks. 

By then, English, Munger, and Rice had realized the data mapping that won Godinez v. Davis could help elsewhere. They founded Advancement Project California, now Catalyst California. Over the next several years, this work helped shape three subsequent school construction bond initiatives that raised $30 billion across the state, including a further $5 billion specifically for crowded schools. 

“It wasn’t an easy fight, by any means,” Munger said. “But this victory showed us that we could do so much more if we didn’t limit our work to the courtroom. Data mapping, in the hands of our communities of color, could be a game-changer for transforming California’s unfair public systems.”