“It’s shocking to me that we are this many decades down the road, with this many court challenges, this many legislative enactments … that this is where we sit here today in 2023,” said JudgeThe hearing came 50 years after the state’s constitution that embedded this educational requirement took effect.
Alex Rate, legal director for ACLU of Montana, pushed back, saying leading a horse to water and making him drink is indeed the responsibility of the state. In a 2004 lawsuit over school funding, a state court found that Montana’s educational goals showed no commitment to the preservation of Native American cultural identity. Funding started to be allocated a few years later.
“I have a really difficult time with that conclusion,” she said. “What if this was special education funding?”The lawsuit cites an independent evaluation of the program from 2015, which found its implementation to be “very minimal” in some districts, attributing this to “the absence of accountability.”