Topeka ? The state has no obligation to pay the legal expenses of the Kansas school districts whose lawsuit forced a dramatic increase in state funding for education, a federal judge has ruled.

Attorney General Paul Morrison announced the ruling Thursday, saying the state’s payout to the 19-district coalition known as Schools for Fair Funding would have ranged from $2 million to $3 million.

“School finance litigation has consumed state government for the past eight years,” Morrison said. “The court stated that this case is over.”

The underlying lawsuit reached the Kansas Supreme Court, which ruled in 2005 that the state’s system of funding elementary and secondary education failed to satisfy the Kansas Constitution.

Legislators responded by approving an $831 million increase in aid to school districts, being phased in over four years.

Schools for Fair Funding initially filed lawsuits in both state and federal court. The state case, which named the state of Kansas and the State Board of Education as defendants, went forward while the federal case was put on hold.

Participating districts spent a total of $3.2 million in tax dollars on the litigation, of which $2.2 million went to the organization’s attorneys.

But the districts were barred by state law from obtaining legal fees in state court, so the coalition turned to the federal bench to try to recover its costs.

Alan Rupe, attorney for the coalition, argued that his clients were entitled to attorney’s fees because they prevailed in a state lawsuit that simply made the federal case moot.

U.S. District Judge Monti Belot disagreed.

In his ruling Wednesday, Belot said Schools for Fair Funding couldn’t recover legal fees because issues decided in the state case weren’t identical to issues raised in the federal case.

And, since there was never a trial in federal court, no compensation was warranted for Schools for Fair Funding, the judge said.

“There was never a substantive ruling that the plaintiffs won at the federal court,” said Dan Biles, an attorney for the state school board.

Rupe wasn’t available Thursday to comment.