The lawsuit was brought by members of the Edgewood Concerned Parent Association representing their children and similarly situated students. The suit was filed on June 30, 1968 in the District Court for the Western District of Texas. In the initial complaint, the parents sued San Antonio ISD, Alamo Heights ISD, and five other school districts; the Bexar County School Trustees; and the State of Texas. They contended that the "Texas method of school financing violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution." The lawsuit alleged that education was a fundamental right and that wealth-based discrimination in the provision of education (such as a fundamental right), created in the poor, or those of lesser wealth, a constitutionally suspect class, who were to be protected from the discrimination.
Eventually, the school districts were dropped from the case, leaving only the State of Texas as the defendant. The case advanced through the courts system, providing victory to the Edgewood parents until it reached the Supreme Court in 1972.
The school districts in the San Antonio area, and generally in Texas, had a long history of financial inequity. Rodriguez presented evidence that school districts in the wealthy, primarily white, areas of town, most notably the north-side Alamo Heights Independent School District, were able to contribute a much higher amount per child than Edgewood, a poor, minority area.
From the trial brief, Dr. Jose Cardenas, Superintendent of Schools, Edgewood Independent School District testified to the problem in his affidavit, the following information:
Edgewood is a poor district with a low tax base. As a result, its ad valorem tax revenue falls far short of the monies available in other Bexar County school districts. With this inequitable financing of its schools, Edgewood cannot hire sufficient qualified personnel, nor provide the physical facilities, library books, equipment and supplies afforded by other Bexar County Districts.To illustrate, the Edgewood residents are making a high tax effort, have burdened themselves with one of the highest proportion of bonded indebtedness in the county to pay for capital improvements and, never, in the history of the district have they failed to approve a bond issue.Cardenas cites a study, "A Tale of Two Districts," which makes the following comparisons in 1967-68 between Edgewood and the North East Independent School District:Classroom space: North East had 70.36 square feet (6.537 m2) per student; Edgewood had 50.4 square feet (4.68 m2) per studentLibrary books: North East had 9.42 books per student; Edgewood had 3.9 books per studentTeacher/Pupil Ratio: North East's ratio was 1/19; Edgewood's was 1/28Counselor/Pupil Ratio: North East's was 1/1,553 children; Edgewood's was 1/5,672 (the nearby Alamo Heights district had a 1/1,319 ratio)Dropout rate, secondary students: North East's rate was 8%; Edgewood's was 32%In fact, the financial disparity between Edgewood and Alamo Heights increased in the four years that it took for Rodriguez to work its way through the court system "from a $310 total per-pupil disparity in 1968 in state and local support between the districts to a $389 disparity in 1972."