On November 13, 1997, WLF filed a brief with the Court on behalf of itself and five Members of the Texas House of Representatives, urging the Court to reverse a lower court decision which held that the State of Texas could not obtain a legal ruling concerning the legality of important state education reforms. The lower court held that a complaint filed by the State of Texas was not ripe for judicial review, and therefore the State could not obtain a ruling on whether the implementation of its education reforms implicated the federal Voting Rights Act. In its brief in support of Texas, WLF argued that Texas’s claim was not premature because Texas had asked the lower court to resolve a purely legal question of statutory interpretation which did not require a fact-specific application. WLF argued that Texas was subjected to serious hardship by being denied review, because it was placed in the untenable position of not knowing whether its education reforms were legal.
