> In the Sausalito case, the state said the district had violated the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.
> The settlement, filed in state court in San Francisco...
Sounds like it was (a) not overt (if it took a two-year investigation to establish it), (b) illegal, and (c) eventually punished under preexisting law.
Prevention, through detection (which goes to your point of "(a) not overt (if it took a two-year investigation to establish it)" seems like the better thing for these sorts of circumstances, but is a lot more difficult to achieve. Part of me, possibly naively, believes that transparency is the answer, so that those of us who care can determine things without a 2 year investigation, but that feels... too simplistic. Not sure what a better answer is, though.