In its response to requests for information in the American Civil Liberty Union's landmark education case, Williams v. California, the State of California stated that it does not know whether public school students in California have books to study and claimed that it has no responsibility for ensuring that they do.

"Students and teachers are back in school," said Michelle Alexander, Director of the Racial Justice Project of the ACLU of Northern California, "but the State of California is nowhere to be found. The State does not know what it ought to know about our children's education and it has no plan to find out. There's no control and no responsibility, and as a direct result many of California's students still don't have the most basic of all learning tools: a book."

In fact, the defendants in the class action lawsuit, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, the California Department of Education, and the State Board of Education, confirmed their ignorance of public school students' access to textbooks and other instructional materials.

When asked recently to identify California public schools in which the availability of textbooks falls short of state standards, defendants' attorneys replied, "Defendants do not have this information. The extent of educational materials in all districts is unknown."

The defendants' attorneys also maintained that the State Board of Education is not "in charge" of determining if "textbook availability falls below district-set standards."

The California Legislature, on the other hand, has clearly recognized that the California Constitution requires the state to ensure that all students have textbooks and other instructional materials.

In 1994, the Legislature declared that, "...education is a fundamental interest which is secured by the state constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law, and...to the extent that every pupil does not have access to textbooks or instructional material in each subject, a pupil's right to educational opportunity is impaired." (uncodified Section 1 to Education Code section 60177).

"When schools fail, students have rights guaranteed by California's Constitution," said Michael Jacobs, at Morrison & Foerster, pro bono co-counsel in the case, "but the State's educational agencies don't respond, and don't even know when public schools fail to provide every student with the books and materials required for learning."

"Students across the state, from San Francisco to Los Angeles," said John Affeldt of Public Advocates "are struggling to learn grammar, foreign languages, math, science, and history without a book to take home and study. In an era of high-stakes testing and fiercely competitive university admissions, the lack of a textbook can alter the course of their lives. While the State has been quick to impose higher standards on students, like a new high school exit exam, its been lethargic in fulfilling its responsibility to see all children succeed."

Students who don't have textbooks expressed anger and frustration about the difficulties they face in learning. "We mostly don't get homework in my math class because we don't have books," said Silas Moultrie, an eighth grader at Luther Burbank Middle School in San Francisco. "Without books, we're not getting the education we should be getting."

"Nobody at the state level knows whether students are receiving texts," said Michael Jacobs. "They're just signing the checks. That's not the return the people of California expect or deserve for our investment in education. An obvious first step is to get an accurate idea of the extent and severity of the problem. The state should have a system for finding that out, but it doesn't. This motion seeks to address that gap in basic accounting."

The suit is brought by the ACLU affiliates of California, Morrison & Foerster LLP, Public Advocates, Inc., the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Center for Law in the Public Interest, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Professors Karl Manheim and Alan Ides, Peter Edelman of the Georgetown University Law Center, and Robert Myers of Newman. Aronson.Vanaman.