O’Melveny Prevails In Historic Pennsylvania School Funding Trial

An O’Melveny pro bono team achieved a landmark victory on behalf of Pennsylvania’s underfunded school districts and disadvantaged schoolchildren. A Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court judge ruled in 2023 that the state’s school funding system is unconstitutional and must be reformed because it deprives students in low-income districts of quality educations.

The firm served as lead counsel, guiding the case for almost a decade. Nearly 80 O’Melveny attorneys devoted 26,000 billable hours to help achieve this precedent-setting win.

William Penn School District et al. v. Pennsylvania Department of Education et al. was filed in 2014 by six Pennsylvania school districts, the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools, the NAACP-PA State Conference, and a group of public school parents. An O’Melveny pro bono team worked alongside the Education Law Center and the Public Interest Law Center. The lawsuit was filed against state legislative leaders, state education officials, and the governor, for failing to uphold the General Assembly’s constitutional obligation to provide a “thorough and efficient” system of public education.

O’Melveny successfully argued that “[a] system in which hundreds of thousands of students fail to meet state standards in math, English language arts, and science cannot be considered adequate.”  The decision impacts millions of schoolchildren in Pennsylvania, particularly those going to school in low-income communities of color.