LOS ANGELES – A groundbreaking lawsuit aimed at scrapping California’s teacher tenure and seniority-based layoff laws is scheduled to go to trial in late January, but only if it survives Friday’s hearing which may result in its outright dismissal.

The case in question is Vergara v. California, a lawsuit filed by pro-reform group Students Matter on behalf of nine students who say their constitutional right to an equal education has been undermined by state laws that keep “grossly ineffective” teachers in the classroom year after year.

The lawsuit is based on evidence that finds “grossly ineffective” teachers are disproportionately found in high-poverty, low-results schools that are primarily attended by poor and minority students.

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The group defines “grossly ineffective” teachers as the bottom 5 percent of educators who fail to provide their students with even “the most basic tools necessary to compete in the economic marketplace or to participate as a citizen in our democracy.”

The suit alleges the presence of seriously inept teachers undermines the state’s constitutional guarantee that all students have access to a quality education.

As such, the plaintiffs are asking the courts to strike down five specific teacher job protections in the education code – including tenure, “last in first out” layoff policies and cumbersome rules governing teacher dismissals.

Ideally, California’s Legislature – instead of its courts – would change these laws, but the majority of lawmakers have proven too weak-kneed to stand up for children and against their union backers.

The students’ case appears to be in good hands. They are being represented by two “superstar” attorneys, former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and Theodore Boutrous, who successfully argued in court that California’s gay marriage ban was unconstitutional.

It’s been widely speculated that if the Students Matter attorneys win this case, it could spark similar lawsuits across the nation.

That’s precisely why the defendants in the case will spend Friday morning trying to convince Judge Rolf Michael Treu that the case should be dismissed before it goes to trial in late January.

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The defendants, by the way, represent virtually every member of the state’s Education Establishment, including the State of California, the State Superintendent, the California Department of Education and the State Board of Education. The state’s super-powerful teacher unions – the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers – have also signed on as defendants in the case.

Attorneys for this motley collection of politicians, educrats and labor leaders argue the lawsuit has no merit, as the tenure, layoff and dismissal statutes treat (harm) all students the same.

This generation’s Brown v. Board of Education?

Students Matter officials are waging a public relations campaign to accompany their lawsuit. The effort will paint “the teachers union as obstructionists who protect their members at all costs,” POLITICO reports.

Olson, one of the Students Matter attorneys, told a gathering of education reform activists in October “the campaign for students’ rights” will only succeed if it wins “both in the courts and in the court of public opinion.”

To that end, the group “has gathered hair-raising stories about a small number of teachers who sexually harassed students, refused to plan lessons, appeared on campus under the influence, yet held onto their jobs for years because of union-backed job protections,” POLITICO adds.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of such stories – the most notable being the revolting case of Mark Berndt, a longtime Los Angeles elementary teacher who recently pleaded guilty to engaging in lewd acts with his young pupils. When the abuse story broke, Los Angeles school officials decided it was easier and less expensive to pay Berndt $40,000 to resign, instead of attempting to navigate California’s costly and mind-bending process for firing teachers.

But Olson isn’t settling for emotion-based arguments to win the day. He’s also poking huge holes in the teacher unions’ philosophical arguments for tenure and seniority-based layoff policies.

During his October talk to reform proponents, Olson argued that no professional group in the country would make the teacher unions’ claim that 100 percent of its members are good at their jobs. He also noted that awarding teachers tenure after just 18 months on the job is unheard of outside of public education.

He added that if America’s public school leaders were empowered to replace the bottom 5 percent of teachers with effective educators, “it would eliminate the entire educational gap between the United States and the top-ranked countries in the world.”

According to Olson, until these excessive teacher job protection policies are changed in California and elsewhere, the kids who need the most help will be saddled with the least effective teachers. That, in turn, will only increase the achievement gap that exists between minority students and their white peers.

Perhaps that’s why he has compared Vergara v. California to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that eventually led to the desegregation of America’s public schools.

Linking the two cases might be a stretch for some, but it’s an indication of how seriously Students Matter is taking its lawsuit. And it’s an indication that education reform advocates should pay attention to what happens in court on Friday.