Topeka ? The state’s largest teachers union is suing the state and Gov. Sam Brownback over a bill that repeals teacher tenure rights in Kansas.

The repeal of tenure rights — which teachers prefer to call “administrative due process rights” — was part of a larger bill, House Bill 2506, that included funding to address a Supreme Court ruling on school finance, as well as other education policy and tax issues.

Kansas NEA attorney David Schauner and president Mark Farr announce the filing of a lawsuit in Shawnee County District Court challenging the repeal of teacher tenure. The repeal was included in a school finance bill passed during the 2014 legislative session.

David Schauner, attorney for the Kansas National Education Association, said that’s unconstitutional under Article 2, Section 16 of the Kansas Constitution which says, “No bill shall contain more than one subject, except appropriation bills and bills for revision or codification of statutes.”

Supporters of the bill addressed that issue during legislative debate. They said it met the Constitution’s requirement because it was titled “a bill concerning education,” all the provisions dealt with various aspects of education.

Brownback issued a statement denouncing the lawsuit as “labor union politics.”

“Kansas has high quality, well-funded schools and I signed HB 2506 to keep it that way,” Brownback said. “I am concerned this misdirected lawsuit may cast doubt on, or unwittingly endanger, school funding just as classrooms are convening all across Kansas.”

The tenure rights meant that non-probationary teachers — those with three to five years on the job at one district — were entitled to an administrative due process hearing before they could be summarily fired or non-renewed for the following year.

The law, which dated back to the 1950s, was intended to prevent teachers from being fired over reasons that had nothing to do with their performance, including political retribution. Civil service workers in other parts of state government enjoy similar protections.

Critics of that law said it made it too difficult for districts to fire ineffective teachers. They also noted that most workers in the private sector do not enjoy such protections.

Schauner said teachers should not be compared to private-sector employees.

“Teachers are in a unique position,” Schauner said. “They have not only 150 to 200 students a day, but they have two parents for most of those kids as well and they are under a lot more stress than the typical non-teaching workforce. We believe the stresses of that job entitle those employees, our members, to quality dismissal processes.”

Teacher tenure laws have been common in most states, although the level of protection they provided teachers varies widely from state to state. Many of them have come under attack in recent years, either in Republican-controlled legislatures or in court action by conservative activist groups.

North Carolina passed a major revision to its tenure law in 2013. But a state judge in one county put that change on hold, saying it amounted to an unconstitutional “taking” of property rights from those teachers who had already earned tenure.

In California, though, a state judge recently ruled that state’s tenure law unconstitutional, saying it violated the rights of students to a quality education because it made the firing of bad teachers virtually impossible.

And in New York, the Partnership for Educational Justice, led by former CNN correspondent Campbell Brown, is organizing a lawsuit challenging that state’s tenure law.

In Lawrence, teachers and the Lawrence school district negotiated revised tenure rights into their new master contract for the 2014-2015 school year. Although it still gives non-probationary teachers the right to an administrative hearing before an independent hearing officer, the new language says the hearing officer’s decision is only advisory, and that the school board has the final say in personnel decisions.