Memphis Street Academy Charter School at J.P. Jones, along with seven parents and their children, sued the Philadelphia School District after the district sought to close the school. The closure was triggered by a 'Surrender Clause' in the school's 2018 charter agreement, which mandated that the school would forfeit its charter and close if it failed to meet specific academic conditions. The school had previously failed to meet benchmarks in its 2012 charter and entered a new agreement with stricter conditions tied to the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) scores and student attendance rates. When the school failed to meet these conditions for the 2021-2022 school year, the district invoked the clause. The plaintiffs argued that the district's use of the performance framework and the surrender clause were racially discriminatory under Title VI and the Pennsylvania Constitution, claiming the metrics disproportionately harmed schools serving Black and Hispanic students. The District Court dismissed the case, and the plaintiffs appealed to the Third Circuit.
The Third Circuit, in a non-precedential opinion by Judge Schwartz, addressed the plaintiffs' claims across four counts. First, the court affirmed the dismissal of the claim under the Education Clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution, noting that this clause imposes a duty on the General Assembly to provide a thorough and efficient system of public education, but does not create a private right of action for tort liability or a right to attend a specific school of choice. Second, the court upheld the summary judgment on the Title VI and Pennsylvania Constitution discrimination claims. The court explained that to prevail on a discrimination claim, plaintiffs must prove racially discriminatory intent, not merely a disparate impact. While the plaintiffs presented statistics showing that charter schools serving predominantly Black and Hispanic students were more likely to fail the benchmarks, the court found no evidence that the Philadelphia School District adopted the performance framework or enforced the surrender clause with a discriminatory purpose. The record showed the framework was adopted for race-neutral reasons to monitor performance, and the surrender clause was triggered because the school failed to meet the agreed-upon academic targets. Third, the court addressed the Pennsylvania Constitution's Article I, Section 29. The plaintiffs argued this provision offered greater protection than federal law by prohibiting disparate impact without intent. The court rejected this, interpreting the phrase 'because of the race or ethnicity' to require a causal link between the protected trait and the action, consistent with federal equal protection analysis. Finally, the court dismissed the plaintiffs' affirmative defenses regarding the ambiguity of the charter and the Charter School Law, noting that the plaintiffs failed to develop these arguments in their summary judgment briefing, effectively waiving them on appeal.
The decision reinforces the enforceability of charter school surrender clauses in Pennsylvania when schools fail to meet academic benchmarks. It clarifies that school districts can use performance frameworks that may have a disparate impact on minority-serving schools without violating Title VI or the state constitution, provided there is no evidence of discriminatory intent. The ruling leaves open the question of whether the Charter School Law permits material alterations to charters, but the plaintiffs waived that issue. The charter school remains closed or subject to closure as ordered by the district, and the legal standard for proving discrimination in educational administration remains focused on intent rather than statistical disparity.
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