That’s the title of this house editorial in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about a Washington state supreme court ruling last Friday (in League of Women Voters v. Washington) that overturned the state’s law authorizing charter schools. The ruling, by a 6-3 vote, came just as nine charter schools, serving some 1,200 students, had started the new school year, thus (per this article) “creating chaos for hundreds of families.”

The charter-school law was adopted by voter initiative in 2012, with the strong support of Bill Gates and other wealthy liberals. It was of course vigorously opposed by the arch-enemy of quality public education, the teachers’ unions.

The case presented two issues: (1) whether charter schools are “common schools” under the state constitution, and (2) if not, whether the funding mechanism for charter schools is consistent with the state constitutional requirement that certain revenues be exclusively applied to common schools. The majority and dissent agreed that charter schools are not common schools. But the majority, in an analysis that appears underwhelming, held that the charter-school law unconstitutionally allocated restricted funds to charter schools, whereas the dissent determined that the law “does not expressly require use of any of the three restricted funds” and is therefore facially constitutional.