A three-judge district court panel in Topeka on Monday denied a request by the Shawnee Mission school district to intervene in the ongoing school finance lawsuit.

But it continued to give the district limited permission to intervene in one aspect of the case that is still before the court, the question of whether certain kinds of funding are being distributed equitably among the state’s 286 school districts.

The case, which was filed in 2010 and has already been reviewed once by the Kansas Supreme Court, challenges both the adequacy and equity of state funding for public education as a violation of the Kansas Constitution, which requires the Legislature to make “suitable provision for the finance” of public schools.

Shawnee Mission, a large suburban district in Johnson County with a relatively low poverty rate, was not one of the original plaintiffs in the case. The four main plaintiff districts are Kansas City, Wichita, Dodge City and Hutchinson, all of which have relatively high poverty rates and large numbers of students from non-English speaking households.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on the equity portion of the suit and ordered the Legislature to increase the so-called “equalization” funding for districts’ capital outlay and local option budgets. But it sent the larger question of overall adequacy of school funding back to the three-judge panel to be judged using a different standard.

Since then, though, several things have happened. The 2014 Legislature did increase equalization funding, and the panel initially said that was enough to satisfy the Supreme Court order. But the “fix” ended up costing the state more than anticipated, and when the state ran into more revenue problems in the fall, Gov. Sam Brownback ordered allotment cuts in the base funding for public schools.

Those allotment cuts had a ripple effect that also disrupted the equalization formulas, prompting the plaintiffs to file a motion in January to reopen the equity portion of the lawsuit. The plaintiffs asked, among other things, for an order to suspend operation of the entire local option budget law until the equity problems are fixed. A hearing on that motion, where Shawnee Mission has limited permission to intervene, is set for May 7.

In its motion to intervene, Shawnee Mission argued that it receives less money per-pupil than any of the plaintiff districts, and that its interests were not being adequately represented by either the plaintiffs or the Attorney General’s office, which is representing the state.

But in its order Monday, the three-judge panel said there was nothing Shawnee Mission could add to the case that it couldn’t add with a simple “friend of the court” brief.

“It is far past time in this case, and this Court presents no forum at this point, to adjudicate anew the inequitable features, subject of remedy, affirmed to exist in Gannon,” the panel wrote.

More recently, however, Kansas lawmakers have passed, and Gov. Brownback has signed into law, a bill that completely repeals the entire school finance formula and replaces it for the next two years with a system of block grants.

Plaintiffs in the case are now asking the district court to declare that law unconstitutional. The panel so far has not set out a schedule for ruling on that motion, but an initial hearing could also take place at the May 7 hearing.