Supreme Court to Hear Case on ELL Funding in Arizona

Long-Running Dispute Involves Two School Laws, Questions of Federalism

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to step into a long-running lawsuit in Arizona over funding for services to English-language learners, in a case that also raises questions of federalism and the interplay between two federal education laws.

The justices accepted appeals from legislative leaders and the state schools superintendent of lower-court rulings that Arizona was not adequately funding English-language-learner programs under a little-known 1974 federal law that requires states to act to help students overcome language barriers.

A federal district judge at one point ordered the state legislature to increase funding for such programs or else face fines of as much as $2 million per day, although a federal appeals court tossed aside the sanctions. But the appeals court last year upheld a ruling by the judge finding that a 2006 state law that increased funding for...