For district leaders, suing states over school finance formulas may seem like a high-stakes gamble on where judges will come down, as high-profile decisions with very different outcomes in Texas, Kansas, and Washington state suggest.
But in reality, the fate of these challenges is far from random, hinging instead on plaintiffs’ ability to prove that those formulas abide by the specifics—and ambiguities—of each state’s constitution, legal scholars say.
