Civil War-era law used to sue Mississippi over school system

Four mothers are challenging Mississippi’s public education system, saying the state is violating a legal promise it made a century and a half ago to keep a “uniform system of free public schools.”

The lawsuit, filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center against the state’s top officials, is using a unique legal theory to challenge inequities in the system, saying Mississippi is failing to keep its promise, made as a condition to rejoin the Union after the Civil War.

But since then, Mississippi has broken that promise many times, starting with the adoption of the 1890 constitution, said Jody Owens, managing attorney in the center’s Jackson office. “The state’s education system is shamefully inequitable and anything but uniform.”...

http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2017/05/23/lawsuit-mississippi-broke-its-promise-provide-uniform-education-all-students/338931001/