It’s been called the Holy Grail of education lawsuits: getting a federal court to recognize a right to some degree of public education within the U.S. Constitution.

The chances got a bit dimmer last month, when a federal district court judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by several Detroit students alleging that Michigan policymakers’ failure to teach them to read violated their Constitutional rights.

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It’s partly because, after dozens of successful school financing lawsuits in the 1990s and 2000s, state courts have grown far more wary of education adequacy litigation, noted William Koski, a professor of law at Stanford University.

“We’re not doing well in state courts anymore. More recently, they’ve become really nervous of these big educational rights litigations,” Koski said. “Maybe it’s time to look at the federal courts again.”

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“These efforts will last until there’s a sense that it’s just not going to work,” Stanford’s Koski said. “I think we need to test it a whole bunch of times.”