FULTON COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT v. S.C. et al. (2025)

The Supreme Court today denied the petition for certiorari in this case.

I concur in the denial of the petition for certiorari. I write separately to note one legal and one practical aspect of this petition.

I begin with the legal point. While the superior court's determination that a student has a constitutional due process interest in attending the public school of her choice certainly appears dubious, the crux of S.C.’s claims here, with considerable support from the record, appear rooted in her interest in reinstatement to her prior status following a finding that the disciplinary action taken against her was without factual or legal foundation. While the superior court's order could be read as contemplating S.C.’s due process interest in admission to the school, it appears to me the better understanding of the record is that S.C., by pursuing her statutory rights under OCGA § 20-2-1160—which authorizes the State Board of Education to reverse the action of the local board—was entitled to restoration of the status she enjoyed prior to the adverse disciplinary action taken against her. See, e.g., Ellis v. Caldwell, 290 Ga. 336, 338, 720 S.E.2d 628 (2012).

Turning to the practical point, I note the curiosity of one of the arguments most fervently pressed before this Court by the Fulton County School District, particularly in connection with its request for emergency relief. Specifically, FCSD expends great energy in claiming that restoring S.C. to her position at the school will be “very disruptive” to the operations of the school, which FCSD represents operates on a strict enrollment cap of exactly 1,500 students. Accepting for purposes of this observation that the admission of one additional student would indeed “irreparabl[y] harm” the operations of a high school of that size, as FCSD's filings in this Court assert, I will simply observe that it seems incredibly unwise to “backfill” the position of any student removed from the school pursuant to an adverse disciplinary decision until the conclusion of any active appeals process or the expiration of the period for making an appeal. Stated differently, FCSD created any alleged overpopulation scenario by admitting another student to fill S.C.’s seat before completion of the process to determine whether her removal from that seat was lawful. FCSD's choice to admit another student before the lawful process of determining the presence of a vacancy had concluded is a problem of its own making and does not represent an “emergency” in this Court.

All the Justices concur, except Land, J., disqualified.