It’s now up to the Texas Supreme Court to decide whether to give its own guidance to the Texas Legislature about funding local school districts or to leave in place the district court’s judgment striking the system down.
The AG's office filed its notice of appeal in the latest round of school-finance litigation. As expected, this notice was filed as a direct appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, bypassing the intermediate level of review. A group of school districts has also filed its own notice of appeal.
This kind of direct appeal is permitted in certain narrow circumstances, a process I've written about before. The previous round of litigation in 2005, West Orange Cove II was also a direct appeal. West Orange Cove I, however, took the more usual route through the intermediate courts.
The next step is for the parties to formally ask the Texas Supreme Court to accept jurisdiction. Mirroring the process for direct appeals in the U.S. Supreme Court, this is done through filing a Jurisdictional Statement that stands in place of a petition for review. If the Court wishes to review the case, it will do so by 'noting jurisdiction' and setting the case for full briefing and future argument.