Campbell County School Dist. v. State

The question before us is the constitutionality of Wyomings public school finance system. Four Wyoming school districts (Campbell County School District No. One, Uinta County School District No. One, Sweetwater County School Districts Nos. One and Two) brought suit in January 1992, against the State of Wyoming, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the State Board of Education and others seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the state by claiming certain components of the Wyoming public school finance system were unconstitutional - Page 1244 under the Equal Protection Section of the Wyoming Constitution (Art. 1, § 34) and the Education Article of the Wyoming Constitution (Art. 7, §§ 1-23). After the state defendants answered with a denial that the identified components of the finance system were constitutionally infirm, a coalition of twenty-three school districts intervened as defendants aligned with the state defendants. Later, Laramie County School District No. One and the Wyoming Education Association intervened as plaintiffs and aligned with the initial challengers of the school finance system. These intervenors identified other components of the school finance system which were allegedly unconstitutional. Thus, as the issues were joined, the challengers attacked five components of the school finance system: the divisor feature, the municipal divisor feature, the recapture feature, the optional mills feature, and the capital construction feature.