Where the Oregon case is documented, tracked, and pursued.
The legal record is the spine of OASTL’s work. This is the page beneficiaries, journalists, and future plaintiffs come back to.
The State’s Motion for Summary Judgment
On May 13, 2026, the State of Oregon filed a Motion for Summary Judgment in Siuslaw School District 97J et al. v. State of Oregon, Coos County Circuit Court Case No. 24CV38372. The motion asks the court to dispose of the surviving claims — the 2024 Sun Pass decertifications and the 1000 Road decoupling — without trial.
The plaintiffs are preparing their response. Briefing will continue through the summer.
What governs the schedule
The case is set for trial on the August 18-28, 2026 docket before Judge Andrew E. Combs in Coos County. That trial date governs the pace of summary-judgment briefing. The court will need to resolve the State’s motion well before then.
What remains in dispute
The State’s motion turns on the legal posture of OASTL’s claims — whether they survive under the procedural framework the Court of Appeals established in Advocates for School Trust Lands v. State, 346 Or App 668 (January 28, 2026), and whether the trust theory Judge Combs reserved for the merits in his March 6, 2025 letter opinion can be sustained on the factual record at summary judgment. The Combs March 2025 ruling already found standing for the school-district and student plaintiffs and denied the State’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The State now argues the claims should not reach trial. The plaintiffs disagree, and are responding on the merits.
OASTL will post updates as the briefing schedule develops. Filed papers, when they become public, will be added to the case docket on this page.
Advocates for School Trust Lands v. State of Oregon
After years of state-level litigation in Oregon, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled on January 28, 2026 that beneficiaries may sue the State-as-trustee on Article VIII school-trust claims. The ruling — Advocates for School Trust Lands v. State of Oregon, 346 Or App 668 (2026) — brought Oregon into line with what other school-trust states have long allowed. The Oregon Attorney General is appealing to the Oregon Supreme Court; the petition for review is pending. The ruling is not yet final.
What the panel did
The panel — Judge Joyce, writing for Presiding Judge Aoyagi and Judge Egan — reversed Judge Combs’s February 2024 dismissal and remanded for further proceedings. The court reached three holdings that matter for what comes next.
First, on the OTCA question. The court held — relying on the Oregon Supreme Court’s 2009 Comcast of Oregon II v. City of Eugene — that challenges to the validity of laws and rules are not “torts” under ORS 30.260(8). The State’s framing of OASTL’s fiduciary-breach claims as tort claims requiring OTCA notice is foreclosed by controlling Supreme Court precedent.
Second, on leave to amend. The trial court had denied plaintiffs leave to amend their first claim against the legislative defendants on futility grounds. The Court of Appeals reversed: legislative immunity protects legislators personally; the State itself is not immune from a declaratory-judgment claim about the constitutionality of legislative enactments. Amendment would not be futile.
Third, on standing. The schoolchildren plaintiffs have standing under the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act to challenge the management of the common school lands. The court worked the MT & M Gaming framework — legally recognized interest, real or probable injury, practical effect — and found all three.
Why it matters here
The Court of Appeals decision is the foundational authority for OASTL’s response to the State’s May 13, 2026 Motion for Summary Judgment in 24CV38372. The case posture, the OTCA theory, the standing theory — all of them turn on what Advocates v. State held. Oral argument on that appeal was heard at Corvallis High School on April 11, 2025; the decision came nine months later.
For decades, Oregon courts blocked school-trust suits at the standing-and-jurisdiction stage. The January 28, 2026 ruling cleared that procedural barrier. Other school-trust states had cleared it long before. The win is real — OASTL has been chasing it for years — and the win is local. The doctrinal field-wide news is that Oregon has now caught up.
Comcast — Why Lawmaking Is Not a Tort, and Why That Matters Here
Comcast of Oregon II, Inc. v. City of Eugene, 346 Or 238 (2009), is one of those quiet Oregon Supreme Court opinions that turns out, years later, to be carrying weight. It is the doctrinal hinge under the 2026 standing victory in OASTL’s appeal — and a precedent the State’s May 13 Motion for Summary Judgment has to climb past.
What Comcast established
Comcast challenged a City of Eugene order it argued the city had no authority to adopt. The case asked: was a challenge to the validity of a public body’s lawmaking a “tort” subject to the Oregon Tort Claims Act and its notice rules?
The Supreme Court, en banc, said no. The controlling holding, in the court’s own words:
“A public body’s act of adopting a law or rule in violation of an applicable procedural or substantive requirement is not a tort under ORS 30.260(8).”
When a citizen challenges whether a legislature, agency, or city council had legal authority to enact what it enacted, that challenge is not a tort claim. It is a challenge to the validity of the act itself. The OTCA’s tort-notice provisions — designed for traffic-accident-style claims against public bodies — do not apply.
Why it is load-bearing for OASTL
The State’s IV.C argument in its May 13, 2026 MSJ leans on the proposition that OASTL’s claims — that the State breached fiduciary duties to school-trust beneficiaries by enacting and amending laws like ORS 530.490 and SB 1546 (2022), and by promulgating administrative rules that diverted trust property away from school funding — are tort claims requiring OTCA notice the plaintiffs did not give. Comcast is the controlling Supreme Court precedent that says otherwise.
How Advocates v. State (2026) built on Comcast
The Court of Appeals’ January 28, 2026 ruling applied Comcast directly to OASTL’s constitutional-trust fiduciary-breach claims:
“The only fiduciary duties at issue here are alleged to arise from the Oregon Constitution and the Oregon Admission Act passed by Congress in 1859, and plaintiffs allege that defendants breached those duties by enacting laws and administrative rules that are allegedly inconsistent with those duties. In this context, the duties at issue are part of the body of law governing the lawmaking process that, as public officials and entities, defendants must follow.”
The court then quoted Comcast’s controlling sentence and expressly overruled an older Court of Appeals decision, Barns v. City of Eugene (2002), to the extent it had pulled the other way. Comcast governs; lawmaking is not a tort; OASTL’s claims that challenge the validity of school-trust statutes and rules are not tort claims under the OTCA.
The State has petitioned the Oregon Supreme Court for review of the 2026 ruling. Until and unless that court reverses, Advocates v. State is binding intermediate-appellate authority and Comcast is binding Supreme Court authority. Both point the same direction.
The two Combs letter opinions that hold the active case together
Two letter opinions from Judge Andrew E. Combs of the Coos County Circuit Court form the procedural spine of the active OASTL case, Siuslaw School District 97J et al. v. State of Oregon, 24CV38372. Both are signed, dated, and on the public docket. Together they tell you where the case stands.
February 26, 2024 — Advocates v. State, 23CV39056
Judge Combs dismissed the original complaint in full. He ruled that legislative immunity barred the two claims naming the Senate President and House Speaker; that even reframed against the State itself, the breach-of-fiduciary-duty claim was a “tort” under ORS 30.260(8), subject to the Oregon Tort Claims Act’s notice rules the plaintiffs had not satisfied; and that “the issues presented here are political, not legal.” He denied leave to amend. He also wrote, in a line OASTL has not forgotten: “The court understands why plaintiffs would be frustrated.”
That dismissal was the loss that drove the appeal. The appeal became Advocates for School Trust Lands v. State, 346 Or App 668 (2026) — the January 2026 standing victory, which reversed the trial-court ruling on the OTCA question.
March 6, 2025 — Siuslaw v. State, 24CV38372
While the appeal was pending, OASTL and a slate of co-plaintiffs led by Siuslaw School District 97J filed a new and narrower case in the same court, focused on defendants’ acts in 2024 — the Sun Pass decertification of 1,920 acres and the 1000 Road decoupling. Judge Combs ruled on the State’s Rule 21 motions a year later. The disposition is the present procedural shape of the active case:
- Pre-2024 claims dismissed. Same sovereign-immunity reasoning as before; claim preclusion barred the Elliott decoupling claims at issue in 23CV39056.
- 2024 acts survived. Filing the lawsuit on August 8, 2024, served as OTCA notice for the 2024 acts; sovereign immunity does not bar them.
- Standing FOUND for school districts and students. Combs walked through the Oregon Supreme Court’s MT & M Gaming framework — legally recognized interest, real or probable injury, practical effect — and concluded the school-district and student plaintiffs satisfied all three.
- Failure-to-state-a-claim DENIED. The surviving claims state a cognizable theory.
The most important sentence in the March 2025 opinion is its finding on the trust theory: “If plaintiffs are correct and defendants are in fact trustees, they owe fiduciary duties to these plaintiffs, which would include, among others, the duty of loyalty, care, and prudence.” That sentence is the trustee-duties holding the State now has to displace at summary judgment.
How the two opinions connect
The February 2024 ruling closed the door to one theory. The March 2025 ruling — on a different complaint, with different plaintiffs and a narrower set of acts — found the door open for school districts and students to challenge the State’s 2024 decisions on trust property. The January 2026 Court of Appeals then reversed the foundational OTCA reasoning from February 2024, putting controlling appellate authority behind the OASTL posture in 24CV38372.
Where the case stands
Standing is established. The trustee-duties question is reserved for the merits. The State has moved for summary judgment on the surviving claims. Trial is set for the August 18-28, 2026 docket. The two Combs opinions are the procedural ground under everything that comes next.
A note on the plaintiff — Siuslaw School District 97J and the Pendleton lineage
The lead plaintiff in OASTL’s active case, Siuslaw School District 97J et al. v. State of Oregon, 24CV38372, is Siuslaw School District 97J — a small coastal Oregon school district based in Florence.
It is the same school district that appears, sixteen years earlier, in the docket of Pendleton School District 16R v. State of Oregon, 345 Or 596 (2009). Pendleton was a school-funding case brought by eighteen Oregon school districts and a group of student plaintiffs against the State, seeking a declaratory judgment that the legislature had failed to fund public education at the level Article VIII, section 8 of the Oregon Constitution requires. The Oregon Supreme Court agreed: “courts may grant a declaratory judgment that the legislature failed to fully fund the public school system.” Siuslaw 97J was one of the eighteen.
The same defendant — the State of Oregon. The same general theory — the State has failed a duty to public schools that the Oregon Constitution makes judicially cognizable. The same fundamental remedy — a declaratory judgment under ORS chapter 28. Sixteen years apart.
What changed between the two cases is the constitutional provision in play. Pendleton was an Article VIII, section 8 case about adequacy of funding. Siuslaw is an Article VIII, sections 2 and 5 case about the State’s fiduciary duties over Common School Lands and the Common School Fund — the school-trust corpus and its income, both of which feed the same K-12 public-education system. The duty changes; the school district at the center, and its constitutional standing as a beneficiary, does not.
The Oregon Supreme Court has already held that this plaintiff may bring a declaratory-judgment case against this defendant on an Article VIII duty. That holding still stands.
Natalie Scott — The Scott Law Group
Natalie Scott, founder of The Scott Law Group, served as Lead Appellate Counsel in the case OASTL won on January 28, 2026. Her brief and oral argument carried the standing question across the line.
Natalie graduated summa cum laude from the University of Oregon School of Law and previously clerked for Judge David Brewer on the Oregon Court of Appeals.
The Corvallis Effect. Oral arguments were held at Corvallis High School with a student audience present. The strategic choice put the beneficiaries — Oregon schoolchildren — visibly in the room while the standing question was argued. Lawyers, journalists, and judges have remarked on the effect.
The argument. Oregon’s constitutional duties to its schools are legally enforceable by the students themselves. Where the State has redirected the trust corpus or its income away from the common schools, the beneficiaries — not just a hypothetical attorney general — can sue.
Daniel Zene Crowe — leading the expanded legal offensive
Daniel Zene Crowe has been retained as OASTL’s General Counsel to lead the expanded legal offensive against the State of Oregon.
Background & Expertise
- Constitutional Litigator. Nationally recognized advocate for constitutional rights. Successfully challenged Crowe v. Oregon State Bar. Not afraid to take on the State’s most powerful agencies.
- Military Leadership. West Point graduate. Army Ranger. Retired Lieutenant Colonel. Served as a JAG officer.
- Public Service. Oregon’s inaugural Veterans’ Advocate. Sat on the Mt. Angel School Board.
The Strategy: A “Pincer Movement”
Building on the foundational victory secured by attorney Natalie Scott, Mr. Crowe is executing a two-pronged strategy:
- The Broad Front (Constitutional Challenge). Leveraging the recent Court of Appeals victory to establish that the State has violated its fiduciary duties.
- The Precision Strike (Forensic Investigation). Launching a targeted legal discovery process to expose the specific accounting failures and mismanagement.
“We are no longer just arguing policy; we are demanding the math. The State acts as a trustee for our children.”
Laura D. Cooper, OSB# 863589
Ms. Cooper serves on the OASTL Board of Directors. She was admitted to the Oregon State Bar in [year pending] and brings decades of high-level legal experience in civil rights and complex litigation. She is a former General Counsel for the Pain Relief Network and counsel for additional civil rights organizations.
“As an attorney, you rarely see a constitutional question this clean and ready for adjudication.”
The six duties of a trustee.
Trust law is older than Oregon and older than the United States. It speaks in six duties. Together they tell you what the State of Oregon owes Oregon’s schoolchildren — and has failed to deliver.
- 01
Duty of undivided loyalty to the beneficiary
A trustee acts solely in the interest of the beneficiary — Oregon’s schoolchildren — and may not divert trust assets to other purposes.
- 02
Duty to preserve trust property
School-trust lands and the Common School Fund are corpus. They must be safeguarded against loss, encumbrance, and waste.
- 03
Duty to exercise reasonable care and skill
Trust assets must be managed with the prudence a careful person would apply to the affairs of another — not the standard of ordinary politics.
- 04
Duty to make trust property productive
The corpus must generate income. Idle or under-managed lands betray the perpetual promise to the beneficiaries.
- 05
Duty to take and keep exclusive control
The trustee may not delegate away control of the corpus to actors who do not owe fiduciary duties to the beneficiaries.
- 06
Duty to pay income to beneficiary
Income from the trust must reach the common schools — the beneficiaries the trust was created to serve.
Frame for Oregon: these are what the State of Oregon owes Oregon’s schoolchildren and what OASTL’s litigation seeks to enforce.
Why this is broken — in plain English.
A case study: the Richardson Trust
Tom and Kathy Richardson spent a lifetime building a vineyard. They put it into a Trust Agreement that transferred ownership to Beaver State Bank, with the schoolchildren of Oregon as beneficiaries.
For decades, the trust worked: Beaver State Bank managed the vineyard productively. Revenues went to the schools.
Then a new trustee, troubled by the ethics of grape-growing, signed an agreement with Beaver Consultants to convert the vineyard into a public research park. A central feature: transfer ownership of the land from the Richardson Trust to the State.
This case is factually the same as the Elliott State Forest. Only the names have been changed:
| Richardson Trust | Elliott Reality |
|---|---|
| Vineyard and grapes | Treefarm and trees |
| Richardson Trust | Oregon Constitution Article VIII, establishing School Trust Lands and the Common School Fund |
| Beaver State Bank | Oregon State Land Board |
| Oregon Vineyard Management | Oregon Department of Forestry |
| Beaver Consultants | Elliott State Research Forest Authority |
Just as it doesn’t make sense to shut down vineyards over concerns about alcohol use, it doesn’t make sense to convert school-trust forests into research preserves at fire-sale prices.
Review the key documents.
Five court filings — the documents that establish the case, the State’s denial of duty, the rulings granting standing, and the order denying the motion to dismiss.
Defendants’ Answer
The “Smoking Gun”: State’s “No Duty” Defense. The State’s formal Answer explicitly denying all fiduciary duties.
First AMENDED Complaint
Full complaint detailing the breaches of fiduciary duty, constitutional claims, and plaintiff classes.
The Full Case (background book)
Comprehensive background on the legal and historical foundation of the Common School Fund.
Letter Opinion Granting Standing
Court Order Affirming Plaintiff Standing. Affirmed standing for schools and students and allowed 2024 claims.
Letter Opinion Denying Motion to Dismiss
Judge Combs’s opinion affirming plaintiffs’ authority to sue and denying the State’s immunity defenses.
For the historical legal record across all twenty trust-lands states, see the peer archive.
The historical record of court rulings and statutes lives at schooltrusts.net, which maintains an annotated archive of school-trust-lands jurisprudence. The Legal Desk keeps the active Oregon campaign.