A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit demanding literacy rights for Detroit children.
Filed in 2016, the suit attempted to force the state of Michigan to improve the condition of city schools. A week ago, Detroit school officials released a report pegging the cost of repairing the city’s school facilities at half a billion dollars.
But in an opinion issued Friday night, U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy III dismissed the suit.
Murphy sided with attorneys for Gov. Rick Snyder and state education department officials who argued “access to literacy is not a fundamental right.”
Murphy wrote “the State's alleged failure to provide literacy access to Plaintiffs fails to state an equal-protection claim on the basis of burdening a fundamental right.”
