In Vergara v. California (2014), a trial-level court ruled that California laws governing teacher tenure and dismissal were unconstitutional. This study analyzes Vergara in light of the shifting use of the courts to promote equal educational opportunities and the changing power bases of educational interest groups, including educational advocacy groups and teacher unions. This study particularly uses policy regimes theory to analyze the relationship between political interests, ideas, and institutions and highlights how the case represents an inversion of how educational interest groups have traditionally used the courts as vehicles for effecting education reform. Grounded in this analysis, this study explores legal and policy implications for both courts and reformers acting in this new context. Downloaded from this convergence, including the institutional weakness of the courts to handle scientific evidence, the idea that deregulation can enhance teacher performance, how the legal underpinnings of the case have traditionally been used to leverage increased regulation toward equal educational opportunity, the relative changes in power bases of teacher unions and advocacy groups focused on deregulation, and how the courts interact with the political process more broadly to promote educational and social change. Viewed through this lens, the inversion of the historical and legal trends represented by Vergara potentially reflects the development of a new policy regime reconstituted from key elements of the old. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines historical institutionalism and legal analysis, we examine the historical use of the courts to promote equal educational opportunity and the role of interest groups in this process; how Vergara realigns such institutions, interests, and ideas; and the education law and policy implications moving forward.