Abstract: Belonging is a fundamental need without which people cannot function optimally. Accordingly, school belonging—students’ perceptions of mattering or feeling cared about, accepted, respected and valued by faculty, staff, and peers—impacts students’ well-being, academic motivation and outcomes.
Equal Protection jurisprudence governing education largely overlooks the value of school belonging. Instead, it centers on a formal conception of equality, or an “anti-classification” principle, which essentially prohibits purposeful discrimination based on a fixed set of suspect traits. This formalistic “anti-classification” approach permits many policies and practices that undermine students’ sense of school belonging and inhibits schools from taking certain measures to foster belonging.
This Article argues for understanding the Equal Protection Clause as protecting an individual interest in school belonging. The Equal Protection Clause requires states that provide public education (as all states do) to make educational opportunities available to all on equal terms. I argue that in evaluating whether a state is fulfilling this Equal Protection obligation, courts ought to consider the demonstrated relationship between school belonging, students’ well-being, and academic outcomes. A state fails to make educational opportunities available to all on equal terms when it adopts practices and policies that undermine certain students’ sense of school belonging. This belonging-oriented approach would go further than current Equal Protection jurisprudence does to advance the Fourteenth Amendment’s anti-caste objective.
I outline how this belonging-oriented approach could inform Equal Protection analysis in several exemplary cases: (1) race- and wealth-based disparities between schools; (2) school discipline; (3) policies pertaining to inclusive curricula; and (4) race-conscious policies designed to include members of underrepresented groups. In doing so, I address some of the challenges and questions that would arise under a belonging-oriented approach.
Finally, I briefly explore a similar line of argument under state constitutional rights to education. I argue for conceiving of school belonging as an educational resource that the state must distribute equitably and adequately.
