On the burden of high gas prices for rural schools--and the Supreme Court's decision that (Part II)

School busses parked near Coburn, Pennsylvania, October 2018
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

This follows up on my post from a few days ago about how school transportation is poorly funded in California, even in rural areas.  Interestingly, a Supreme Court case from 1988 held that school districts don't have to provide bus service/transportation.  I wrote about the case here in relation to how the U.S. Supreme Court had a history of overlooking rural realities and thus being urban-normative, in particular regarding restrictions on abortion and state laws that required women to make multiple trips to abortion providers.  The salient excerpt follows: 

In holding that school bus services are not constitutionally required ... the Court in 1988 in Kadrmas v. Dickinson Public Schools demonstrated a lack of understanding of the burden of distance on rural families were not required under the U.S. Constitution to provide bus services to their students. Although Justice O'Connor noted the law's disparate impact in relation to wealth, she did not recognize the disparate impact the law would have on rural families. On the one hand, the Court recognized a spatial phenomenon, that population density necessarily affected school district structure. prompting school districts with small populations to reorganize into larger districts in order to be more efficient. On the other, the Court overlooked the spatial inequality that resulted from requiring families to bear the cost of school bus transportation. The Court’s failure to take seriously rural difference and the disadvantages it created for rural families suggests that the lived realities and fiscal costs associated with rural spatiality are not readily cognizable to the Justices, even when those Justices pay lip service to economic inequality.

Justice O'Connor wrote:    

“The Constitution does not require that such a service be provided at all, and it is difficult to imagine why choosing to offer the service should entail a constitutional obligation to offer it for free.” 

I observed then:    

The fact that Justice O’Connor grew up in the West, on a ranch, might have endowed her with greater spatial realism. The fact she grew up in relative affluence, however, may undermine her ability to relate to the intersection of rural spatiality and socioeconomic disadvantage.

I also noted the dissent of Justice Thurgood Marshall, regularly the Court's most ardent advocate for the poor and socioeconomically disadvantaged.  

In his dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall notes that the Court failed to adequately address all residents’ needs. He focused on the needs of poor families, stating, “This case involves state action that places a special burden on poor families in their pursuit of education.” Kadrmas v. Dickinson Public Schools, 487 U.S. 450, 467 (1988).

I noted that these concerns could be extended to rural communities.

Finally, regarding the bigger picture--urban-normative courts' inability to recognize and credit rural realities:  

Tacit neglect or misunderstanding of the rural milieu in other legal contexts similarly reveals the urbanormativity of the U.S. Supreme Court’s jurisprudence. In considering the constitutionality of school bus service fees, voter identification laws, and prayer at town hall meetings, the Court has disregarded the needs of rural residents or simply overlooked how rural livelihoods differ from an implicit urban norm.