Kansas Plaintiffs Challenge State Remedy in Supreme Court

The Kansas Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Kansas’ school funding adequacy lawsuit Montoy v. State in Topeka on May 11, 2005. Lawyers for the state and the plaintiffs that brought the suit in 1999 went before the court to argue the merits of the school funding bill passed by the legislature little more than a month earlier. The supreme court had declared the previous school funding system unconstitutional, and ordered the legislature to improve the system by April 12, 2005. The House and Senate were able to agree on legislation, but Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius so strongly disagreed with the law’s failure to address the severe inequities of Kansas’ school funding system that she allowed it to become law without her signature.

Plaintiff attorneys Alan Rupe and John Robb focused their arguments on the legislature’s failure to base the spending system on the actual costs of education in the state, a primary requirement of the court’s January order. Though a legislatively initiated professional costing-out study, in addition to less formal studies by the state Department of Education, was performed shortly before the lawsuit, there is no evidence that lawmakers relied on the results of that study in setting funding levels. In fact, the plaintiff lawyers argued in their brief to the court that the state’s new funding plan funds most proposed spending categories at only one tenth of the recommended level. According to plaintiffs, the plan also exacerbates the existing disparities in education funding between wealthy and poor districts by improving the ability of districts to levy and increase local education taxes, a practice that solidly advantages wealthier communities. Rupe and Robb also used their brief to emphasize the clearly political nature of that and other elements of the funding plan.

In contrast, the state’s attorney, Kenneth Weltz, ignored the details of the bill itself, arguing instead that the court did not have the right to declare a law unconstitutional without a lawsuit specifically directed against it. The court seemed distinctly unsympathetic to this line of reasoning, and, as reported in the Lawrence Journal-World, one justice went so far as to remind Weltz of the court’s responsibility under the active lawsuit to evaluate the law’s constitutionality. As detailed by the Journal-World, Weltz faced harsh questioning from the judges, who seemed determined to understand how lawmakers identified the funding amounts that ultimately became part of the law. Weltz often had no answer.

The court had earlier expressed concern over the law’s failure to identify funding sources beyond the 2005-2006 school year, and emphasized that the burden of proof lay with the legislature, given that the state’s funding system had already been declared unconstitutional. Nonetheless, many legislators in attendance reacted defensively to the judges’ questioning of the state attorney. As reported in the Wichita Eagle, some had previously expressed frustration that they would be unable to defend the legislative process through which the law was designed directly to the court, though they had been offered the opportunity to submit amicus briefs.

The only other party permitted to argue in front of the court was the State Board of Education, whose lawyer, Dan Biles, praised the legislature’s progress as a good-faith effort and a positive first step, but asked that a cost study be mandated and funded for subsequent years. Biles and the plaintiff lawyers all expressed concern that the court act quickly to ensure that schools would have a viable funding stream by the time their budgets for the next school year must be solidified, in early summer. However, while Biles wants the legislature’s budget to be approved for this year, Rupe and Robb asked the court to order adoption of the cost-study recommendations, which, with inflationary adjustments, would raise the current $142 million increase in funding to $1 billion for the 2005-2006 school year.

The court gave no indication of when it intends to issue a ruling.

Prepared by Nelly Ward, May 13, 2005