Carolina Journal’s Dan Way delves into legal claims by the Big Education status quo that career status as a teacher in North Carolina qualifies as a property right.

In a lawsuit filed Dec. 17 in Wake County Superior Court, the North Carolina Association of Educators, joined by six teacher plaintiffs, claim career status is a vested, contractual property right, a legal concept that has not been tested in North Carolina regarding public employment. As a property right, the General Assembly cannot remove the protections of tenure without “just compensation,” the lawsuit argues.

Career status

Career status confers continuous employment, rather than year-to-year work, to teachers who serve four consecutive years on probationary annual contracts.

Even though courts have not weighed in on the legal standing of career status, several legal experts said the property-rights argument used by the teachers union is a reach. The General Assembly created career status in 1971, and it should be able to take it away so long as it has used “fair and reasonable procedures” in doing so, said Tyler Younts, the John Locke Foundation’s director of public safety and legal policy. 

The teachers union is overplaying its hand with the tenure lawsuit, said Terry Stoops, director of education and research studies at JLF.

“It’s going to take a legal leap of faith for the judiciary to buy that argument, and maybe they’ll come across the right judge or judges who will be sympathetic to that argument. But I think most people … will rightfully call it ridiculous,” Stoops said.

“I know there are places where a license is looked at as a property right, or tenure is looked at as a property right,” said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. But interpretations of such a right “might be very much state-specific, based on a state’s laws and constitution.”