ECRN's Story

Education Civil Rights Now is a 501(c)3 that launched during the 2021 school closures – in the wake of LAUSD’s legal argument that because children do not have a constitutional right to quality public education, the LAUSD has no legal obligation to provide one, and parents have no legal standing to demand they reopen schools, or do anything else.

Soon after, ECRN began convening grassroots parent groups, advocacy leaders, and constitutional scholars across the country by Zoom to draft model constitutional rights language establishing a civil right to high quality public education.

These zooms have continued every month since then and have evolved over time into a formal coalition with bylaws and membership requirements. Each month coalition members give updates on their education civil rights advocacy and engage with a guest speaker on polling, politics, drafting, or constitutional law.

ECRN members have worked together, learned from each other, and even copied specific language. For example, the words “economy,” “society, “ and “democracy” in California’s 2024 education civil rights legislation originated from 2022 Minnesota education civil rights legislation called the Page Amendment. Other states are now replicating elements of California’s language, including the establishment of a right to high quality public “schools” rather than “education” which makes the right more specific and enforceable.

This is the opposite of a top-down effort, with each state experimenting with different education civil rights formulations and variations based on their unique political and constitutional terrain – with support from pro bono lawyers, constitutional scholars, and pollsters to thread a constitutional and political needle, ensuring that each civil rights framework is simultaneously a statement of universal values and legally actionable.

What unifies these efforts is the collective belief that the status quo where children are forced by law to attend schools with no rights to educational quality is unacceptable, and that all children should have a right to the education they need to achieve the future they deserve.

Other successful social movements like civil rights, women’s rights, marriage equality, and (unfortunately) gun rights have all organized around a values-based constitutional North Star that’s guided their advocacy across election cycles and generations. Education reformers have tried instead to build a movement around school models and technocratic change. It hasn’t worked. ECRN’s mission is to establish that same kind of values-based legal North Star by translating “quality public education” from a soundbite into a civil right for all children in America.