Hearings in Kansas Constitutional Cases

The Kansas constitutional issues, which I’ve been tracking here because of their similarity to Washington’s McCleary case, continue to simmer.  It appears that the Kansas Supreme Court is hearing two separate cases, one involving school finance issues directly and the other involving the fallout from the Legislature’s political battle with the Court.

The Wichita Eagle reported last Friday, November 6th that the Supreme Court heard argument in the school finance case.  In this case, the Court has determined that the State has not fulfilled its duty to fund education, similar to the McCleary case here in Washington.

In the other case, involving the power of the courts to govern themselves and the effort by the Legislature to limit that power, oral argument has been set for December 10th.

Kansas Headed Toward Constitutional Meltdown

Earlier this month, a Kansas trial judge took a poison pill inserted by the Kansas state Legislature in June of this year, thus triggering what might turn out to be an epic separation of powers battle between the Legislature and the courts in the Sunflower State.  The object of the controversy is a 2014 bill, House Bill No. 2338, which strips certain powers from the Kansas Supreme Court over their budgets and their authority to select chief judges in the lower state courts.  That bill was seen by some as retribution by a Republican-led Legislature for two Supreme Court decisions in which the Court determined that school funding was constitutionally inadequate, not unlike our very own separation of powers battle here in Washington State in the McCleary case.

The poison pill, or self-destruct button, is a provision inserted in a funding bill this year by the Legislature.  This year’s bill provides that if a court overturns the 2014 legislation, then all funding for state courts  in this year’s funding bill will be “declared null and void.”

On September 2nd, Judge Larry Hendricks of the Shawnee County District Court declared House Bill No. 2338 unconstitutional, setting off a battle between the branches on two fronts:  (1) a continuation of the battle over the constitutionality of the House Bill 2338, and (2) the new battle over the  constitutionality of the poison pill/self-destruct button.

Non-Appropriation Theory Offered in Inter-Branch, ACA Dispute

In a fascinating recent opinion, the D.C. District Court ruled that a lawsuit filed by the U.S. House of Representatives against the Secretaries of Health and Human Services and the Treasury can proceed.  Judge Rosemary Collyer was not persuaded by the arguments of the Obama Administration that the House does not have standing to sue the Executive branch.  The decision is not a decision on the merits, but it presents a very unique constitutional theory.  The claim by the House is that the Administration is funding programs under the auspices of the Affordable Care Act without an appropriation of funds by Congress.

Lyle Denniston, of SCOTUSblog, perhaps captured the Administration’s arguments and the court’s decision best:

The government had urged the judge to dismiss the entire lawsuit, claiming that the House cannot meet one of the basic requirements for a right to sue in federal court — that is, that it would suffer a legal injury from what the government has done.  The House suffers no harm, the government argued, when the government chooses how to implement a law that Congress has enacted.

The judge, however, said the entire House of Representatives faces the potential loss of its specific authority to appropriate funds for government programs, if the government, in fact, has spent money without Congress’s prior approval.  “Neither the president nor his officers,” the judge wrote, “can authorize appropriations; the assent of the House of Representatives is required before any public monies are spent.  Congress’s power of the purse is the ultimate check on the otherwise unbounded power of the Executive.”

She added: “Disregard of that reservation [of power to the House] works a grievous harm on the House, which is deprived of its rightful and necessary place under our Constitution.  The House has standing to redress that injury in federal court.”

Judge Collyer calls this the Non-Appropriation Theory, and because no case like this has ever been considered by a court before, the Judge will likely be given some professional deference for her originality.

Washington State Supreme Court Imposes Sanctions in McCleary Case

The Washington State Supreme Court, today, issued a decision imposing sanction on the Legislature in the McCleary case.  Recall that the Court held, back in September of 2014, that the Legislature violated the state constitutional mandate that K-12 education is the paramount duty of the State and held the Legislature in contempt of court.  In spite of the Court’s holding at that time, it deferred on the question of which sanctions to actually impose.  Although members of the Court discussed and asked many questions about what types of sanctions would be most appropriate, it ultimately decided to delay the imposition of sanctions until after the completion of the 2015 legislative session.

The Court issued it’s decision on the question of sanctions today, without a subsequent hearing, a mere 24 business days following the last day of the 2015 legislative session, and a mere 13 business days following the filing of the Legislature’s required report to the Court.  Clearly, the Court had a plan for it’s next steps in the case and for the imposition of sanctions against the Legislature, well before the Legislature completed its 2015 session and before it heard from the Legislature following the session.

The central weapon in the Court’s sanctions order is a “penalty” of $100,000 per day until the Legislature adopts “a complete plan for complying with” the state constitution.  This is an interesting choice of sanctions, for several reasons.  First, the “penalty” will be paid into a “segregated account for the benefit of basic education.”  So, if the Legislature does nothing, the Court’s purposes will be fulfilled.  Granted, at the rate of $100,000 per day, the Court’s expectations won’t be satisfied for a few decades, but the sanctions, ironically, allow the Legislature to satisfy the Court without doing anything.

Second, the Court’s sanctions apply to “the State of Washington”.  (Throughout this case, the Court has made a tortured point to refer to the Legislature as “the State.”  Why?  The stated reason is, likely, that the state constitution mandates that “it is the paramount duty of the state” and the Court would likely explain that it is merely following the language of the Constitution.  But the more likely reason is that the Court is quite sensitive about stirring the pot of separation of power, so it repeatedly refers to “the State”, rather than “the Legislature”, as the target of it’s orders.  The Court must think we’re pretty dense.  It’s impossible for the Court to disguise it’s aggressive, inter-branch campaign.  The Court, consistent with it’s practice in this case, imposed the sanctions on the State of Washington.)  This presents an interesting question:  can the Court dictate the appropriation of state monies to this segregated fund where the state constitution clearly provides that the legislative authority of the State (including, presumably, the power to appropriate funds) shall be vested in the Legislature?  The Legislature could, in it’s constitutional discretion, ignore the Court.

And, finally, the Court attempts to strengthen it’s sanction by announcing that the penalties “will continue to accrue until the State achieves compliance.”  This is one of the most curious statements.  Granted, questions about the Court’s authority to enforce any sanctions against the Legislature have been swirling for years.  Now, this statement, in the context of the sanctions themselves, reads almost as if the Court finally and pathetically came to the realization that, when it comes to enforcing it’s will against another branch of government, is limited.  If we flash forward to 2018, the year the Court expects the Legislature to have completed it’s plan, and imagine that the Legislature has done nothing to complete such a plan, or hasn’t done what the Court expected, then what?  What can or will the Court do at that point?  Will it retain jurisdiction in the case for another 3 years?  Will it have the desire to continue the unconstitutional, inter-branch campaign?  Will the composition of the Court be different, with different Justices, with different opinions on the appropriateness of such a campaign?

Lots of open questions remain.  One thing’s for sure:  when the Court finally realized the limits of it’s authority, it meant that the State Constitution, and the critical concept of separation of powers, had prevailed.

Vance Commentary Tees Up the Real Issues in McCleary

This morning, Crosscut posted Chris Vance’s commentary on the end of the legislative session and the next steps in the separation of powers fight between the Legislature and the Supreme Court in the ongoing McCleary case.

Commentary: Court will have a big say on Legislature’s school shortcomings

Vance sets up the coming storm:

Despite all the momentous and commendable policy decisions they made this year, legislators, by their own admission, failed to comply with the state Supreme Court’s order that they adopt a plan showing how they will achieve full state funding of basic education by 2018. And they adopted a budget that actually increases the unconstitutional reliance on local levies. So now all eyes turn to the Court. Will they take action to force lawmakers back to Olympia to deal with education funding?

He spends much of the op-ed crediting Republicans in the Legislature for the reforms and budget solutions, and then returns to McCleary.  Vance correctly points out what I’ve been preaching for some time, that very few, including those in the Legislature, appreciate the profound nature of the constitutional issues involved in this case:

As I wrote earlier this year, despite the fact that this issue has been percolating for decades very few people seem to really grasp what the McCleary decision is all about. This was a common observation among education lobbyists throughout the 2015 session.

Vance gives us a nice, concise review of the details of the case:

So let’s review McCleary:

The Washington State Constitution says it is the state’s “paramount duty” to “amply fund” a “uniform” system of public schools.

Our per-pupil expenditures are among the lowest in the nation. That’s not ample. And school districts rely on local levies for up to one-third of their funding. Given the disparities in local wealth and levy funds among districts, that’s not uniform.

The original, 2012 McCleary decision directed the state to fund a new “prototypical school model” by 2018 without the use of levies. The Court didn’t pull this order out of thin air; they were simply directing the Legislature to actually fund the education model, and meet the timelines legislators themselves established when they passed House Bill 2261 in 2009.

Then, Vance captures the real issues in the case better than any other story I’ve seen to date:

Little progress was made during the 2012 and 2013 sessions so the court justices ordered the Legislature to show them a specific, detailed, “complete” plan in 2014 for achieving full funding by 2018. The 2014 Legislature failed to adopt such a plan. The court found the state in contempt but withheld sanctions until after the 2015 session. But the Legislature, once again, did not pass a McCleary plan this year.

Why is this so difficult? Because actually meeting the court’s order will require billions of new dollars over and above what the Legislature has already spent. And doing away with levies for basic education will impact local bargaining, potentially changing dramatically how we govern our schools.

Yes, the Legislature has put roughly $2 billion more into our schools in the past two budgets. Lawmakers have reduced class sizes in grades K-3, and put money into all-day kindergarten and school transportation, materials and operating costs. But that is just the beginning of the state’s obligation.

There are still thousands of teachers and other educational staff who derive some or all of their compensation from local levies. That’s unconstitutional. The state must pay 100 percent of the compensation for basic education. In addition, the prototypical school model referred to by the court includes lower class sizes in grades 4-12, and the hiring of thousands more paraeducators, administrators, counselors and support staff. The total additional cost to fully implement the model without local levies is over $5 billion per year.

So the Legislature has to find a funding source to replace levies and increase overall education spending by billions of dollars. Ideas have been floated and bills introduced, but to this point there has been no political will to engage in serious bipartisan, bicameral negotiations on this huge issue.

Similarly, there is no consensus on how to limit the use of levies and change education governance. The powerful Washington Education Association, which represents teachers, is adamantly opposed to a law undermining local bargaining, but if you can’t use levies to fund basic compensation, what is there to bargain over locally?

Folks, the Court’s expectation is not simply that the Legislature appropriate a certain amount of new money to K-12, whether in 2015 or by 2018.  The Supreme Court expects, in addition to those funding targets, a dedicated revenue source for K-12 and a solution to the levy issue.  The Legislature might not ever be able to deliver on this expectation, not in 2015 nor by 2018.

Vance wraps up his op-ed:

The 2015 Legislature put more money into K-12, but it made no progress on these daunting structural issues and the legislators have no plan to show the court. In fact, four years after the original McCleary decision, the State of Washington still has no plan for how to create a constitutional educational funding system.

What will the state Supreme Court do? No one knows. But a common belief in Olympia is that the court must now take some sort of action, and that action will most likely result in lawmakers returning to work for a fourth special session sometime this year. A decision from the court seems likely before Labor Day.

So will the 2015 Legislature be remembered for achieving remarkable bipartisan progress on transportation and higher education, or for failing to avoid a messy constitutional showdown over education funding? Stay tuned. We’re not done yet.

Excellent analysis by Vance.  But the real issue here, and one that no one seems eager to focus on . . . yet, is whether the Supreme Court is stepping beyond the constitutional limits on its authority.  That’s a bigger question that I’ll take up in a later post.

President’s Immigration Actions Heard by 5th Circuit Court of Appeals

Obama Plan for Immigration Action Gets a Cold Reception at Appeals Court

New York Times

by Julia Preston

NEW ORLEANS — Government lawyers labored on Friday to persuade federal appeals court judges here to allow President Obama to move ahead with sweeping initiatives to protect immigrants in the country illegally. But the judges’ questions seemed to make it ever more unlikely that the president’s programs, which he has hoped would be a central piece of his legacy, would start any time before the last months of his term, if at all.

A panel of three judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard arguments in a lawsuit by Texas and 25 other states challenging executive actions Mr. Obama announced in November that would give temporary reprieves from deportation to as many as four million immigrants and also permit them to work.

In February, a federal district judge in Texas blocked the programs. On May 26, a panel of the Fifth Circuit denied the administration’s emergency request to cancel that injunction, with two judges supporting the denial and one dissenting. This time, the judges heard a broader appeal by the government on the challenge to the executive actions.

Police officers arrested protesters after hundreds of people staged a sit-in at an intersection to bring attention to immigration reform. Credit Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times

But even though the judges issued no decision on Friday, it seemed highly probable that the administration would lose. By a stroke of bad luck for Mr. Obama and good fortune for the states bringing the lawsuit, two judges on Friday’s panel — Judge Jerry E. Smith and Judge Jennifer Elrod — are the same conservatives who ruled against the administration in May. Court officials said both panels had been randomly selected, well before the administration even brought its case to the Fifth Circuit.

A setback now would be decisively damaging to the president’s argument that he has full authority to carry out the vast programs nationwide and would leave the administration little choice but to take the case to the high-stakes and slow-moving deliberations of the Supreme Court and to hope for a favorable ruling before the end of its term in June of next year.

Mr. Obama has run into far deeper legal trouble than officials anticipated when they decided last year to create a program by executive action, without approval by Congress, extending deportation deferrals and work permits to millions of undocumented immigrants who are parents of American citizens or legal residents.

Judges Smith and Elrod peppered the government’s lawyer, Benjamin C. Mizer, a principal deputy assistant attorney general, with skeptical questions about his contention that the administration had ample authority to focus immigration enforcement on deporting immigrants who commit crimes or threaten national security, and to defer deportations of those who pose little risk to public safety and have families in the United States.

Referring to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Judge Elrod asked, with a note of incredulity, “So the secretary has boundless discretion to give work authorization to whomever he wants and it is not constrained by congressional law?”

The administration’s arguments about the president’s powers have faltered over Texas driver’s licenses. Texas has said it would be a burden to have to pay at least $130 each for driver’s licenses for as many as 500,000 unauthorized immigrants who could obtain the licenses if they received deferrals under the president’s programs. Judge Smith, in his 42-page opinion in May, agreed.

But Scott Keller, the solicitor general of Texas who argued for the states, drew concern from all three judges when he said Mr. Obama’s programs were not only a “sweeping assertion of executive power” but were breaking the law. His arguments raised complex new issues for the judges to consider this time around, probably extending the time before they rule.

The judge who sided with the administration in May, Stephen A. Higginson, was not on the panel on Friday. The third member was Carolyn D. King, nominated in 1979 by President Carter, and formerly chief judge of the Fifth Circuit. She sharply questioned Mr. Keller, the Texas lawyer.

Jurists and legal experts familiar with procedures in the Fifth Circuit court said it was coincidence — and very unusual — that the two panels hearing different phases of the immigration lawsuit included two of the same judges. Judge Smith is an outspoken conservative who has wrangled publicly with Mr. Obama over the extent of the president’s powers.

Court officials said the chief judge, Carl E. Stewart, was so concerned it might appear that the court had acted improperly to influence the immigration case that he ordered a clerk to flip a coin in the presence of witnesses to decide which of two panels scheduled to hear cases this week would handle the Texas lawsuit.

The debate in the hushed, elegant courtroom was overwhelmed several times by the sounds of drums and horns from about 600 protesters from immigrant rights groups in the street outside, including people who traveled from California, Arizona, Texas and Alabama.

A smaller group sat down in the street in front of the offices nearby of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. A spokesman for the protesters said 14 people were arrested, but were quickly released.

“People are still getting deported every day,” said Saket Soni, the executive director of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. He said the demonstrations were intended to “supply hope to the movement and signal to ICE there is much more of this coming.”

The administration has faced even more serious legal trouble with the federal district judge in the case, Andrew S. Hanen. He has chastised officials for failing to inform him that more than 100,000 deferrals with extended three-year terms had been issued under the president’s programs to young immigrants before he imposed the injunction. He ordered the government to cancel the deferrals and collect about 2,000 work cards that were also granted.

Infuriated that the administration had not collected every card, on Tuesday, Judge Hanen issued an unusually harsh rebuke, calling the officials’ conduct “unacceptable and completely unprofessional.” In an action federal judges rarely take, he ordered the secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. Johnson, to appear in person in his Brownsville court on Aug. 19 to explain why the judge should not find him in contempt.

According to McCleary Attorney, Legislature’s Budget Not Enough

McCleary attorney says new budget doesn’t comply

KING 5 News

Natalie Brand, KING 5 Political Reporter

After eight years of legal briefs and battles with the state over education funding and reform, attorney Tom Ahearne is gearing up for his next fight, taking aim at Washington’s new budget.

“This is just groundhog day all over again,” said Ahearne.

The attorney won the landmark McCleary case in 2012 when the State Supreme Court ruled that the legislature is failing to fully fund education. Justices ordered lawmakers to come up with a plan to fully fund basic education and find a stable way to pay for it, beyond relying on local levies.

“The state has not complied with the court’s order,” said Ahearne of the new budget. “The state is in contempt right now because their annual reports haven’t been doing what the state promised. This budget doesn’t do it either.”

Governor Jay Inslee and lawmakers defended the budget passed Tuesday before midnight. It includes an additional $1.3 billion for K-12 education, class size reduction for grades K-3, and a cost of living increase for teachers.

“Is there a lot more work to do? Hell yes,” said Senator Kevin Ranker (D-Orcas Island)

“While there’s a lot of people running around here claiming that we got out of here without raising taxes, guess what? We didn’t do what we had to do,” said Ranker.

Rep. Chad Magnedanz (R-Issaquah), who sits on the committee on Article IX Litigation, admitted not all requirements had been met, specifically a measure to address dependence on local levies. However, he said good progress has been made in showing the legislature’s capability to meet requirements by the 2017-2018 deadline set by the case.

According to court order, both the state and the Ahearne will file progress reports by the end of July.

The Supreme Court will then convene to consider the “adequacy of the State’s compliance and, if necessary, the imposition of contempt sanctions or other remedial measures,” according to a June court order.

If the state is found not to be in compliance, sanctions could be imposed. Although, what those sanctions could be is “the million dollar question,” according to a spokeswoman for the court.

Former Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge said possible sanctions could range from fine to an order that additional money be expended. However, Talmadge describes this situation as “unchartered territory.” What will happen is anyone’s guess, he said.

As the legal fight continues, Tom Ahearne said the two families at the center of the case are still waiting for change. Three of their four children have already graduated from school. Only Carter McCleary remains in high school.

“What does Stephanie McCleary think of this? They’ve filed this suit; they’ve won, but their kid isn’t getting help or funding as the constitution requires,” said Ahearne.

Legislature Passes Budget, But Is It Enough For the Court?

Superintendent:  Legislature still in contempt of court

MyNorthwest.com

by Richard D. Oxley

Many are sighing in relief after Washington’s lawmakers finished a budget preventing a shutdown of state services this month, but State Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn is not one of them.

While Republicans and Democrats took two special sessions to compromise on gas taxes and tax loopholes, Dorn told KIRO Radio’s Seattle’s Morning News that the education portion still falls short of what the state’s Supreme Court has ordered legislators to accomplish.

Related: Gov. Inslee to sign two-year state budget

“I think the court is going to be in a really tough spot to say ‘yeah, you did your job,'” Dorn said Tuesday morning.

The education portion of the budget was perhaps the largest consideration this time around as the state’s Supreme Court has been leaning on the Legislature to adequately fund basic education. It is the result of what has become known as the McCleary Decision; a 2012 decision that says the state failed to fulfill its paramount duty under the constitution to “make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders…”

The task involves finding at least $3.5 billion to fully fund education and provide a plan to continue doing so, by 2018. Lawmakers had to show progress toward that 2018 goal each year. But last year, the Supreme Court checked in on the state’s progress and found it lacking. It placed the state in contempt of court. Justices said the state had to have better funding by April 2014; it failed to meet that deadline as well. Justices then said legislators had to find the money in the 2015 budget.

Dorn said that while a budget was passed, education was shortchanged. He said that the court asked for two things: full funding and a plan that is equitable and ample.

“They didn’t produce a plan,” Dorn said. “What they did is make local districts more dependent on local levies. You are going to have to use more of your local levies to pay for state basic [education] responsibilities because they only paid for state-funded positions and didn’t pay for the money they are shorting them for administration.”

Dorn said that if it were up to him, he would hold state legislators in contempt again.

“It’s about an equitable system and funding what is basic in an equal manner,” he said. “And local levies are set aside for extra things — not basic education things — like an extra hour, a jazz band, field trips.”

Dorn said that he estimates only 12 state legislators actually understand the McCleary Decision and therefore what they are required to do. He thinks lawmakers are due for yet another special session.

“Call them back for a special session, so all 147 legislators actually understand the issue of what McCleary is, what the court said you had to do, and what’s in the statute that the Legislature said you had to pay for,” Dorn said.

For Dorn, the issue has moved beyond education funding and is now a civil rights issue that the state is slow to resolve.

“Wealthy neighborhoods are able to fund more dollars per pupil than poor neighborhoods because they can raise more money with local levies,” he said.

“Guess who’s in the wealthy neighborhoods? White kids and Asian kids. Guess who’s in the poor neighborhoods? Poor kids and minority students,” Dorn said. “That’s an inequitable system and that’s what the court said you had to do a better job of, and we haven’t made any effort to change that.”

McCleary Sanctions Will Have to Wait . . .

State Supreme Court will wait until special session adjourns before deciding on sanctions

The Capitol Record

By Christina Salerno

The Washington Supreme Court will wait until the conclusion of the special session before deciding if the Legislature should face sanctions for failing to come up with a plan to fund public schools.

Chief Justice Barbara Madsen wrote in an order this week that the “court’s consideration of contempt sanctions and other remedial measures will continue to be held in abeyance” until the adjournment of special session, which began on April 29 and is scheduled to last 30 days.

Madsen ordered lawmakers to provide the court with an update the day after special session ends.

Legislators adjourned the regular session on April 24 without an operating budget in place. They are currently in negotiations on a budget plan that will fund the state for the next two years and put more money into basic education.

The state Supreme Court found the Legislature in contempt in September for failing to submit a plan detailing how the state will pay for basic education through 2018. It did not impose sanctions at the time — instead giving the Legislature the chance to purge the contempt if lawmakers came up with an education funding plan by the end of the 2015 legislative session.

 

“McCleary-like” Battle Plays Out in Kansas

Kansas Schools Fight Plays Out Against Backdrop of Debate on Judiciary

New York Times

By John Eligon

TOPEKA, Kan. — This state’s judicial and legislative branches are on course for a constitutional clash after a state appellate court suggested that it might block a school financing plan that lawmakers passed.

The plan, championed by the conservative-dominated Legislature and the Republican governor, Sam Brownback, cut tens of millions of dollars in aid intended to close disparities between rich and poor districts.

The measure passed this month even as a three-judge panel hinted that it might stay the measure while it determines whether the Legislature was breaching its financial obligations. Republican leaders have denounced the court as overstepping its bounds.

“Anybody with an elementary understanding of separation of powers should be shocked to have one branch of government come over and say they’re going to impede the process of the other,” said State Senator Ty Masterson, the Republican chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. “That’d be no different than us passing a law that says, ‘You can render an opinion, but if we do not agree with it, it shall not be published.’ It’s ridiculous on its face.”

The legal wrangling over the roughly $4 billion measure taps into a larger debate over Kansas’ judiciary, as Mr. Brownback seeks greater power in selecting the state’s Supreme Court justices.

The controversy also speaks to the state’s larger budget battle, with moderate Republicans and Democrats saying that large income tax cuts shepherded through by the governor have hampered the state’s ability to pay for essential services.

Critics also say the bill, which finances schools through a block grant, flies in the face of the State Constitution and subverts previous court rulings that the state was not adequately financing its K-12 school system.

Just a year ago, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that lawmakers needed to provide additional aid to poorer districts, and the Legislature passed a law to do that. The ruling stemmed from a years-old lawsuit filed against the state by school districts and parents arguing that education was underfunded.

But months later, when schools calculated their budgets, it became clear that the legislation would cost more than lawmakers had anticipated. So they scaled back on the additional aid to poorer districts by revising the so-called equalization formula, and passed it as part of the new block grant bill, which Mr. Brownback is expected to sign.

“I think those that were pushing this bill thought that it would somehow derail the lawsuit, and it does no such thing,” said John S. Robb, a lawyer for the school districts and parents suing the state. “It’s even more unconstitutional, and this bill destroys the equity solution that we all thought we had last May.”

The bill establishes a block grant to allocate money to districts through 2017. It sets aside a broader decades-old formula that has been used to determine the overall amount of money that the state provided to schools.

Supporters of the block grant approach say it is a necessary timeout from the current system, and that it will give lawmakers a chance to rewrite the school financing formula to make it more current and applicable to present-day conditions. But critics say there is nothing wrong with the formula and that the problem all along has been that the Legislature simply has not allocated enough money.

Two years ago, a district court ruled that lawmakers needed to add about $440 million to education funding to satisfy constitutional requirements. The State Supreme Court is still considering this element of the lawsuit.

The block grant provides roughly the same level of overall state aid for schools — going to $4.17 billion in 2017 from $3.98 billion this year, though most of that increase is going to teacher pensions. Opponents say the block grant locks in spending and, therefore, does not provide for flexibility to get additional money for things like increasing enrollment or providing for additional special needs students.

But supporters say that the bill, meant to be a stopgap measure while a new school funding formula is worked out, establishes a fund that districts could tap if they needed additional money. And they say the block grant frees districts to use various cash reserves set aside for nonclassroom expenses on classroom-related needs.

“It’s taken away the micromanagement that had occurred from the state,” said Shawn Sullivan, the governor’s budget director.

Yet the most controversial part of the block grant is the reduction by about $63 million of money intended to help poorer districts.

“This bill is defying the court order that we’re under right now,” said State Senator Anthony Hensley, the Democratic leader.

The bill cleared the House by just seven votes, 64 to 57, with 31 Republicans voting against it. The Senate passed it 25 to 14 last Monday.

The measure ignored “the changing needs of our students,” said a written statement by three Republican representatives, Melissa Rooker, Barbara Bollier and Diana Dierks. They said they had heard from hundreds of their constituents “and their message is clear: Vote no on this bill, fix our revenue problem and adequately fund our schools.”

The district court scheduled a hearing for May to hear arguments on the issue of equalizing aid for poorer districts. In the meantime, the court said in an order issued last Friday that it “may agree or elect to impose such temporary orders to protect the status quo.”

“In constitutional litigation, that very often includes a stay against the implementation of a law,” said Richard E. Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas.

The court also asked the plaintiffs to add certain defendants to the case, including the state’s treasurer and secretary of state, whom the court might need to rely on to carry out a stay.

“I’m guilty before I had a chance to plead my case because you’re the one who says I’m a defendant,” said State Representative Scott Schwab, a Republican, adding that the case needed to be appealed to the federal courts.

The latest court order has only raised longstanding tensions between judges and Republican lawmakers.

Mr. Brownback has advocated moving closer to the federal model for appointing judges to the Supreme Court, in which he would make a nomination and the State Senate would vote on whether to confirm it, arguing that it would be a more democratic process. The governor also has suggested the possibility of going to direct elections for Supreme Court seats.

Under the current system, the governor chooses from three nominees put forth by a nine-member committee that includes lawyers and appointees of the governor. But opponents of the governor’s plan say that Mr. Brownback’s intent is to make the court more conservative.

During a recent budget hearing, State Representative Jerry Lunn, a Republican, asked a state judge to consider how the judiciary’s pocketbook might be affected if the courts ruled that more money needed to go toward the education system.

“You will be forced to have dramatic cuts, and the judiciary is part of the rest of that pie,” Mr. Lunn said in an interview of his message to the judge. Later, he added, “I asked them, basically, ‘Do you understand the repercussions of that?’ It’s not a threat. It’s a reality.”