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For decades, the legal challenges over when and how to distribute money from civil and criminal penalties to North Carolina's public schools generally have traveled down a winding highway of arcane constitutional law.

The legal opinions, however, literally hit the road this past summer.

The state Supreme Court declined to consider a lower court decision that found school districts were entitled to receive nearly all of the money collected by cities and towns for their red light violations recorded by cameras installed at busy intersections.

The cameras take photographs of people who drive through intersections illegally, which are then sent to the vehicle owner with what has been a $50 ticket.

Police and safety advocates have praised the cameras for reducing accidents at dangerous intersections, but civil libertarians complained they were used only as a cash cow for municipal governments and the companies that operate them.

"It's not about the money. It's about traffic safety," said Tom Crosby, a spokesman for the AAA Carolinas Motor Club. "Too often economics gets in the way of saving lives."

The ruling, based on a 2001 lawsuit filed by a High Point motorist who refused to pay his ticket, has caused most of the state's red-light cameras to go dark.

The General Assembly passed a new law in the final days of the session that attempts to satisfy the concerns of judges while making it less costly to generate and mail citations. But it's unclear whether the new law — essentially a trial balloon for about 10 towns and cities — will survive if there's another legal challenge, or how many local governments will be willing to lose money for an optional program.

"It's the discretion of the elected officials given all of the competing (spending) priorities whether they want to use tax funds to fund the program," said Bob Hagemann, a city attorney for Charlotte, which used to operate stoplight cameras at 20 intersections. "The beauty of the old system was it was funded totally by those who violated the law."

But according to judges, that method didn't jibe with a provision in the state constitution that requires the "clear proceeds" of all penalties, forfeitures and fines go to a special public school fund.

In 1975, the Legislature passed a law stating that "clear proceeds" meant at least 90 percent of the money collected.

What exactly defines a penalty or fine, or what revenues should be counted toward the clear proceeds has been a jumble of laws that have created headaches and litigation.

In 1998, several school boards sued because they said they weren't receiving revenues generated by a host of civil penalties.

The state Supreme Court finally ruled in 2005 that school districts were entitled to tens of millions of additional dollars annually, determining that fines meant to punish someone for wrongdoing fit the constitutional definition.

The latest problem surfaced when a former High Point city councilman sued the city over its red-light camera system because $35 out of each $50 citation went to the company that installed and operated the cameras.

High Point's lawyers argued unsuccessfully that the "clear proceeds" should include the payments to the company. The appeals court panel agreed that "expenditures clearly constitute enforcement costs rather than collection costs."

A month after the state Supreme Court let the Court of Appeals ruling stand, Rep. Pryor Gibson, D-Anson, successfully pushed a bill that would allow several Union County towns, Charlotte, Durham and others to keep operating cameras.

The law would raise the penalty from $50 to $75 and make clear that up to 10 percent of the amount could be retained for the cost of producing, printing and mailing citations. But the law also created a "collection assistance fee" of an additional $15 per ticket to go after scofflaws who aren't paying the fines.

Marshall Hurley, the Greensboro attorney representing ex-High Point councilman Henry Shavitz, who sued the city, is skeptical that the collection fee can be retained by the municipality, suggesting that the new law could be challenged by someone.

"I just don't see that they're making any fundamental changes," Hurley said. "They're just creating another fine or penalty that will be subject to the same distribution requirement."

Gibson said the changes aren't meant to make the red-light programs profitable, but rather less painful for local governments to operate while they try to protect its citizens on the roadways. He points to data from four Union County towns with cameras showing the number of people running red lights daily more than doubled after they stopped issuing tickets in June 2006.

Those towns have yet to decide whether to restart their programs. Meanwhile, Cary and Raleigh are still operating their red-light cameras using another law that may be threatened by the High Point lawsuit.

Gibson said he hopes the new law satisfy school officials enough to avoid litigation as well as set a standard to settle differences in the future.

"There's a huge number of fines and forfeitures," he said. "Every time we do something that's creative, it's going to create (problems)."