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Here’s our take. The good news. 1. The court did not dismiss the case based on a legal issue called standing as the State had asked. 2. The court did not dismiss the case based on a legal issue called “justiciability” and instead held that the Court can issue decisions on school funding. 3. On the question of equity, the Court found that the State created unconstitutional wealth-based disparities by eliminating all capital outlay state aid (“equalization”) payments, LOB and supplemental general state aid payments and required the legislature to address these issues by July 1. 4. The Court...

Here’s the Court’s press release, which has more English and less legalese: The Supreme Court today issued its unanimous opinion in a dispute over K-12 public education financing. The court declared certain school funding laws fail to provide equity in public education as required by the Kansas Constitution and returned the case to Shawnee County District Court to enforce the court’s holdings. The court further ordered the three-judge panel that presided over the trial of the case to reconsider whether school funding laws provide adequacy in public education – as also required by the constitution. The plaintiffs in...

We’ll have more to come on this, but here are the Gannon conclusions.  Among them that the legislature does have to comply with the constitutional mandate for funding public education at a proper level, the lower court must apply the Rose standards and look at costs again and the legislature must address equalization. CONCLUSION In conclusion, the holdings of the hardworking panel are affirmed in part and reversed in part. We affirm the panel’s dismissal of all of the individual plaintiffs’ claims and the plaintiff school districts’ equal protection and due process claims for lack of standing. We...