Judge Blocks "Black Eye Law"

The Carolina Journal A Superior Court judge signed an order yesterday to block a state law that would require 119,000 children across North Carolina to have extensive eye exams before they could start kindergarten next fall. House Speaker Jim Black, an optometrist, had inserted into the state budget last year the requirement for all kindergartners to have an exam from an optometrist or ophthalmologist before they start school. But 87 school boards across the state and one parent from Wake County sued over the new law, saying that requiring the exams - which cost $65 to $120 each - violates the state constitution's guarantee of a free public education. And even the N.C. Attorney General's Office, which is defending the state in the lawsuit, joined in asking Judge Leon Stanback of Wake Superior Court to sign a consent order for a preliminary injunction. The injunction blocks the state from enforcing the eye-exam requirement until July 2007, and it forbids the lawsuits to proceed until Oct.1. Both sides seemed to agree that the injunction will give the General Assembly time to reconsider the requirement in the "short" session that begins May 9. This law has gotten nothing but bad press since it was sneaked into a bill. I've posted about it in the past and have quotes from eye doctors that say that the things Black says these exams will look for is bogas. That these problems don't develop till a few years later. Also the bill makes it illegal for a student to go to school if they haven't had the exam, so much for a free public education. This is a poor piece of legistration that needs to be killed.