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U.S.D. No. 229 v. STATE12/2/1994
The opinion of the court was delivered by
In these four consolidated actions, 97 plaintiffs, including unified school districts, taxpayers, and students, challenge the constitutionality of the School District Finance and Quality Performance Act. The 1992 legislature enacted Senate Substitute for H.B. 2892 (L. 1992, ch. 280). This massive bill
contains 69 sections, although only the first 36 sections thereof are designated as the School District Finance and Quality Performance Act. The bulk of the Act is codified at K.S.A. 72-6405 et seq., although some of the first 36 sections and the undesignated remaining 33 sections are, in codification, widely scattered in the Kansas Statutes. For our purposes, unless otherwise noted, we will refer to L. 1992, ch. 280 as the Act, which also encompasses subsequent legislative amendments thereto.
The district court upheld the Act against challenges that it was constitutionally impermissible as being violative of:
1. Article 6, § 5 of the Kansas Constitution by infringing upon the authority granted to locally elected school boards to maintain, develop, and operate local public schools;
2. Article 6, § 6(b) of the Kansas Constitution in that it does not contain "suitable provision for finance of the educational interests of the state";
3. Section 1 of the Bill of Rights of the Kansas Constitution concerning equal protection (except for the low enrollment weighting factor);
4. Article 2, § 16 of the Kansas Constitution as containing more than one subject;
5. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and §§ 1 and 2 of the Bill of Rights of the Kansas Constitution on the claim that recapture funds provisions of K.S.A. 72-6431(d) constitute an excessive "taking" of property; and
6. Article 2, § 17 of the Kansas Constitution as a law of a general nature which does not operate uniformly throughout the state.
As to the low enrollment weighting factor, the district court held:
The record did not "contain a rational basis grounded upon education theory for distinguishing" between districts containing more than 1,899 students and those having fewer students; the low enrollment provision could not be severed from the Act; and the Act was, accordingly, unconstitutional.
Each of the foregoing holdings of the district court is an issue before us via interlocutory appeal or cross-appeal. Additionally, the district court held that a provision of the Act that set the school districts' mill levy for a period in excess of two years was constitutionally impermissible but was severable. However, that infirmity has been corrected by the 1994 legislature and is not before us.
The Act is, arguably, the most significant single piece of legislation ever enacted by the Kansas Legislature in terms of the amount of tax dollars involved and its impact on the citizens of Kansas. The Act represents a major policy shift in how public school education is viewed and how it is to be funded. That the magnitude of the change contained in the Act has generated such a firestorm of protest in a number of areas of the State is not surprising. The Act has been through the legislative process, was amended in many respects on its way to enactment, and became the law of this state. The consolidated actions herein are challenges to the constitutionality of the legislation. Accordingly, the judiciary's role is very limited in its scope. The wisdom or desirability of the legislation is not before us. The constitutional challenge goes only to testing the legislature's power to enact the legislation.<
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