Detroit schools invite a lawsuit

Heard this one on NPR this morning: "Students Argue Literacy Is A Right In Lawsuit - A group of students from Detroit filed a lawsuit in 2016 against the state of Michigan, claiming bad schools prevented them from learning to read."  An excerpt:

KING: These kids are essentially saying, we have the right to know how to read. It's guaranteed by the Constitution, and our schools failed us. I've got to ask you, does the Constitution actually say anything about literacy?
ROSENBAUM: The word literacy doesn't appear in the Constitution itself, but built into the notions of liberty, built into the notions of being able to participate in our democracy and built into our notions of equality is the idea that when children are compelled to go to a building that is designated as a school, they have to find inside that building teachers and books and core curricular subjects - conditions that make learning possible - and that the exercise of liberty interests cannot be vindicated where their counterparts a few miles away are on campuses that could be mistaken for the University of Michigan.

Pretty sure he's referring to Grosse Point there. This case was already rejected by a Federal Judge who said there's no right to literacy in the Constitution.  Part of me is compelled by the argument that when you force kids to go to a government building for most of their lives, there ought to be some kind of positive output.