Because the Legislature last spring prohibited the state from paying dues to support the Common Core education standards, a state appeals court panel in Kansas City ruled Tuesday, a lawsuit challenging those payments now is "moot," or no longer active.
"There is no longer an actual, live controversy regarding Missouri's membership in and payment of membership dues to SBAC," Judge Lisa White Hardwick wrote for the panel. "A ruling on the merits of the appeal would have no practical effect on an existent controversy."
The SBAC, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, is a multi-state group formed to develop common education standards and the tests to determine how well students are learning, based on those standards.
Those standards were developed as part of the Common Core, an effort by the National Governors Association and the national association of state education commissioners to have tests and learning standards that could be compared from one state to another.
Missouri's State Board of Education approved joining the Common Core effort in 2010, and state officials had agreed to join and pay fees to the SBAC.
However, the standards became controversial after the Obama administration made them part of its "Race to the Top" stimulus funding package, and opponents declared them to be federal government interference with states' rights to control education within their borders.
In September 2014, Fred Sauer and two other taxpayers challenged the state's spending money on the SBAC as unconstitutional.
Last February, Cole County Circuit Judge Dan Green agreed, blocking the state's payments to the California-based SBAC because the consortium is "an unlawful interstate compact to which the U.S. Congress has never consented."
After Green's ruling, lawmakers passed - and Gov. Jay Nixon signed - the state budget for the current 2015-16 business year that eliminated the authority for those payments. Based on the law, state Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) officials removed Missouri from the SBAC.
Still, the state appealed Green's ruling.
During last month's oral arguments, state Solicitor General James Layton told the court, "The state still has an interest in these issues. We still have to have assessments, under both state and federal law.
"There still are economies of scale in doing assessments for a broader population than just our students - and it will still be to our advantage to work with other states to develop assessments."
However, Hardwick wrote: "(Green's) judgment neither addresses nor prohibits Missouri's participation in other multi-state agreements concerning education or any other matter. The judgment pertains solely to Missouri's membership in SBAC."
Although the court's decision was "without prejudice" - meaning the state could reinstate its appeal if the Legislature allowed Missouri to rejoin the consortium - Hardwick wrote: "It is doubtful that this issue will recur, as language in (the state budget) and other legislative action have made it very unlikely that DESE will seek to resume payments to SBAC after the 2015-2016 school year.
"In addition, the legislature has required the State Board of Education to adopt and implement new (state) academic performance standards for the 2016-17 school year and to align the statewide assessment plan to those standards as needed."