The North Carolina Supreme Court has now established a briefing schedule that will allow for oral argument the week of August 29, 2022 in the long-pending Leandro/Hoke litigation. 

Last November, responding to the Legislature’s failure to provide sufficient state funding for years 2 and 3 of the comprehensive remedial plan that the court had ordered to resolve the case, Superior Court Judge David Lee Judge Lee had ordered the State Budget Director and other state officials to transfer approximately $1.7 billion from the State’s general fund to the State Department of Public Instruction and other agencies to allow the plan to go forward. His order was then reversed by the state Court of Appeals.

Subsequently, the state Supreme Court accepted jurisdiction of the case, ordered Judge Lee replaced by Superior Court Judge Michael Robinson, and Judge Robinson then determined in April that although the final state budget covered almost $1 billion of the items in the original court order, the state still owed $785 million to two state government departments and the University of North Carolina System. The parties have taken a variety of positions regarding the procedural and substantive actions that the Supreme Court should take at this point. Presumably these issues will be resolved soon after the hearing the week of August 29.