A federal judge late Friday ruled that students at several Detroit schools have no legal right to literacy, dismissing a lawsuit filed in 2016 that took issue with the schools’ “slum-like conditions.” Judge Stephen Murphy III, in U.S. District Court in eastern Michigan, conceded in his 40-page ruling that “when a child who could be taught to read goes untaught, the child suffers a lasting injury—and so does society.” Despite this, he concluded that literacy is not a right and threw out the suit, which had been filed by Los Angeles-based law firm Public Counsel on behalf of Detroit students.
