[JURIST] The Supreme Court of Washington [official website] on Thursday ordered [order] the state to pay a fine of $100,000 per day for each day that it fails to comply with a previous court ruling mandating adequate funding of public schools. In 2012, the Washington court ruled that education is the state’s “paramount duty” and mandated the legislature implement a new plan to fully fund education from state funds and not local funds. On Thursday the court found that Washington is in contempt of its order because it has not yet adopted a plan that would fully fund education by the 2018 deadline. The money from the sanctions will be held in a separate account to benefit education.

In the last year, there have been several court decisions and legislative actions throughout the United States regarding education. The US Senate [official website] on Thursday passed a bill [JURIST report] to revamp the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. The US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled [JURIST report] in July in favor of tight regulations pointed at the for-profit college industry. The court ruled that the Education Department has the right to demand that schools show that their graduates are financially dependent enough to repay their student loans. In January Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed legislation [JURIST report] that will require all Arizona High School students to take and pass the US Citizenship test before they are able to graduate, beginning in the 2016-17 school year. In August 2014 a judge for a Travis County Civil Court in Texas ruled [JURIST report] that the Texas legislature failed to meet its constitutional duty to provide for Texas public schools because the school finance system is structured, operated, and funded so that it cannot provide a constitutionally reasonable education for all Texas schoolchildren.