The Wyoming Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state’s public-school funding model violates students’ constitutional rights because it does not adequately reflect the true cost of teacher salaries or consistently account for inflation. The split decision leaves lawmakers responsible for repairing those parts of the model while rejecting several other statewide spending mandates imposed by a lower court.
In its 74-page opinion, the court affirmed findings that salary funding had fallen behind the cost of recruiting and retaining qualified teachers and that the Legislature failed to follow the required annual process for considering external cost adjustments. The majority said those shortcomings created funding disparities among districts, violating equal protection and students’ fundamental right to an adequate public education.
The ruling does not prescribe a dollar amount or keep the case under continuing court supervision. Instead, the justices said they assume the Legislature will act in good faith by changing the model and using the legally required process for evaluating inflation. That makes the decision a firm constitutional directive but leaves the policy design and appropriations to elected officials.
The court also narrowed the 2025 district-court judgment. It reversed orders requiring statewide funding for a computer for every student, nutrition programs and school resource officers. It likewise rejected a mandate for a statewide educational-suitability assessment of every school building, finding the School Facilities Commission’s administrative process constitutionally acceptable. The state did not appeal the lower court’s requirement to fund elementary-school mental-health counselors or its finding concerning necessary capital construction, according to the Supreme Court’s case summary.
The case began in 2022, when the Wyoming Education Association sued the state and eight school districts later intervened. A Laramie County judge ruled in 2025 that the state had chronically underfunded schools; Wyoming Public Media’s account of that decision described a broad remedy covering salaries, inflation, student services, technology and facilities. Thursday’s opinion preserves the core salary-and-inflation findings while removing several of those additional obligations.
The practical focus now shifts to the Legislature, which is already recalibrating the school-finance model. Wyoming Public Media reported that Gov. Mark Gordon called the ruling important clarification and urged a durable system that can work through both strong and weak revenue years. The court’s decision says inflation must be evaluated annually, though it does not require an automatic adjustment every year.
Educators and lawmakers emphasized different parts of the result. WyoFile reported that the teachers association welcomed the salary ruling, while legislative leaders highlighted the reversals involving technology, nutrition and safety officers. Justice Kari Gray, joined by a district judge sitting on the case, dissented from the majority’s salary-and-inflation holdings and would have reversed the lower court in full.
For districts, the immediate consequence is not a new payment schedule but a binding legal standard. Under the court’s disposition, the Legislature must bring modeled salary costs and inflation review into constitutional compliance; districts do not receive the additional statewide program mandates that the trial court had ordered.
