Kansas Legislature Threatens Showdown With Court Over School Financing TOPEKA, Kan. - As advocates of increased school funding brought their request to the Kansas Supreme Court on Tuesday, the staunchly conservative Legislature vowed to defy any court orders that it felt trampled on its sovereignty. Legislative leaders have said that if the court repeats a ruling from a separate case in 2005, when it ordered lawmakers to increase school aid to the constitutionally mandated level, they may refuse to honor the decision because it was up to them to determine how state money is spent. In court on Tuesday, lawyers for the state argued that it was unreasonable to restrict the Legislature from adjusting to the real-world financial situation. The Kansas Constitution was "neither a suicide pact, nor a bankruptcy pact," Stephen R. McAllister, a lawyer for the state, said before the seven-judge panel. The potential deadlock over education funding comes as Gov. Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican, and his legislative allies have enacted deep tax cuts. Moderate Republicans and Democrats have said that it was a cruel juxtaposition to slash state revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars at a time when education is underfunded by more than $400 million. Alan L. Rupe, a lawyer for the school districts and students seeking increased funding, criticized the state leaders for passing a tax cut, "and then stand here to plead they cannot increase funding to schools." The parties argued for more than three hours, and they now must wait for the court to issue its ruling. Ray Merrick, the Republican speaker of the House, told The Kansas City Star that he did not see the Legislature "going along with what the courts say." The debate over school funding dates to the 1960s, when lawmakers amended the Constitution, adding an article that laid out provisions for education aid. It read, in part that "the Legislature shall make suitable provision for finance" of public education. Several court cases in the ensuing years wrestled with education funding. The current case, Gannon v. Kansas, grew out of one that started a decade ago, Montoy v. Kansas. In Montoy, a coalition of students and school districts argued that the Legislature failed to finance schools at a level in accordance with the state's Constitution. Montoy resulted in a 2005 ruling in which lawmakers raised the base state funding to $4,492 per student (from about $3,900), and the court approved it. The state began phasing in increases each year and got up to $4,400 per pupil by the 2008-9 school year. But amid a financial crisis, the Legislature and the governor, Mark V. Parkinson, a Democrat, began scaling back the amount of aid in 2009. The decreases have continued under Mr. Brownback and the per student figure is now at $3,838. In response to the cuts, a new coalition of students and school districts sued the state in what has become the current case, Gannon v. Kansas. A district court in January ruled in favor of the Gannon plaintiffs and the case is now before the Supreme Court on an appeal by the state. The judges seemed to question whether the state could be trusted, given that it agreed in the Montoy case to funding increases and then stopped. "Clearly, the promise you and others were espousing six years ago has never been kept," Justice Eric S. Rosen said to Mr. McAllister. The lawyers and judges wrestled over what constitutes adequate funding for education and whether the court had the authority to set a financing level. "It's always changing," Justice Nancy L. Moritz said of the necessary school funding levels. That's what makes it not manageable for the courts to apply. Opponents of increasing education dollars say that what matters is how money, not how much of it, is spent. Dave Trabert, president of the Kansas Policy Institute, which advocates for limited government, faulted the study that computed the $4,492 figure for base state aid in Kansas, saying it did not account for what could be accomplished through efficient spending. "We should find that out and provide the appropriate funding," Mr. Trabert said in an interview. But we need to take all of the funding into account. The base state aid does not include federal money and some local funds. It also represents a baseline - schools might, for instance, receive more money for a low-income student. Many conservatives say that this minimum figure does not take into account the actual amount spent on schools, like expenditures for building maintenance and food service. In the 2011-12 year, about $5.8 billion was spent on schools, or about $12,656 per pupil, according to the state. Mr. Rupe insisted that the courts had the power and the responsibility to make sure that the Legislature was following the Constitution in the amount of education money it appropriated. "I don't, frankly, trust the Legislature to fund education," he said. But the state argued that if the public was unhappy with how lawmakers have funded schools, it could vote them out. The Constitution, said Arthur S. Chalmers, a lawyer for the state, "trusts the electorate to make sure that the schools are funded."