Dive Brief:

• The U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal from parents in Kansas' Shawnee Mission School District, who hoped to overturn a cap on property taxes for education that they said was designed to “prevent wealthy districts from having an unfair advantage over poorer ones.” 
• The decision upholds the U.S. Appeals Court in Denver's previous ruling that the federal court can’t override the state’s own funding plan.
• The plaintiffs have been fighting since they first filed suit in 2010, and they say the cap violates their "constitutional right to equal protection of the law,” KSNT reports.

Dive Insight:

Though a lawyer for the parents group is quoted as optimistically noting that the U.S. Supreme Court may have “not have wanted to take up these important constitutional questions until we exhaust all our lower court remedies,” it seems doubtful that the case will be heard after its initial denial.

According to SchoolFunding.info, the Kansas Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s dismissal of the suit on Oct. 18, rejecting a 2011 trial court decision that found a decision in favor of the plaintiffs would require the education funding system as a whole to be found unconstitutional. Another lawsuit, Gannon v. Kansas, accused Kansas of failing to fully fund schools in accordance with its constitution.

The new Supreme Court decision will likely catch the attention of both Arizona and Washington, as each state is struggling to execute new funding plans after facing long-running lawsuits similarly related to education funding.