Youth human rights perspective case study - Essay Example

In a lawsuit filed against the Department of Education of Hawaii or DOE as well as the Hawaii Board of Education, filed as a class action suit on behalf of three homeless families by the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii Foundation or ACLU Hawaii, Kaleuati III and the other plaintiffs alleged that actions by the Board and by the DOE, the matter of contention is the discrimination that children of homeless families faced, which made it difficult for them to acquire an education on the same footing as children from families with homes.

The lawsuit prospered, and in the end the DOE took the course of coming to terms with the plaintiffs and with the lot of the homeless of Hawaii via a case settlement, rather than having to face the prospect of a long-drawn legal process where the outcome seemed to in favor of the homeless families/plaintiffs (American Civil Liberties Union). The lawsuit is interesting for the way Kaleuati III and the other plaintiffs argued that although legislation exists that was supposed to protect the rights of such homeless children to access to education on par with the access given to children from families with homes, practices and decisions by the DOE and by the Board relating to the education arrangements of homeless children had the effect of circumventing the law.

The effect is that by intention or not, the rights of the children to equal and effective education access were violated. The law referred to here is the so-called McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which has the following provisions: 1) funding to support homeless children equal access to education in public schools; 2) children are to continue to go to the schools they attend at the point of homelessness; 3) children are to be enrolled right away even without required enrollment documents; 4) the DOE is to provide means of transport to homeless children even when they move to other places to seek shelter