Abstract
Although the Supreme Court declared segregation the most abusive affront to education and ruled to eliminate vestiges of segregation “root and branch,” those same roots have grown unchecked to remain prominent today. One of the undercurrents of state-sponsored discrimination that has escaped desegregation remedies is the skewed, whitewashed curriculum that permeated K-12 classrooms in Jim Crow America. More troubling, is that those vestiges of an inadequately biased curriculum are still slithering in students’ courses today. Although student movements and education reformists have attempted to counter skewed curricula by supplementing them with separate ethnic studies courses, states like Florida recently passed legislation restricting these programs because of a misplaced, satanic-panic-like fear of Critical Race Theory. Florida Governor Ron Desantis’ efforts to pass compounding legislation that restrict education curriculum are evidence of an ongoing cultural war in which classrooms have become the battlefield, and its students have become the collateral. If one were to challenge curriculum regulations that perpetuate hallmarks of segregation with the state’s education provision, Florida courts would refuse to review it because to the Florida Supreme Court, reviewing standards in Florida’s education clause is nonjusticiable. Without judicial recourse, not only does the state constitution fail to serve its people, but it also eviscerates an avenue the Florida citizenry can use to address the covert yet pervasive influence of racial discrimination in the K-12 public school curriculum. This Comment argues that Florida’s education clause is not only justiciable but also charges the state with an affirmative duty to provide an adequate education to its students, and a racially biased curriculum violates that duty.