The Alabama Supreme Court on Wednesday reopened a lawsuit over whether Alabama's prepaid college tuition program can pay less than full tuition for students.

The court, in a 7-0 decision, told a lower court to look at whether state officials can retroactively apply a new law passed by the Legislature to allow reduced tuition payments.

"I'm taking it as a positive sign," said Patti Lambert, co-founder of Save Alabama PACT and a member of the board that oversees the tuition program.

For two decades, parents paid money into the Prepaid Affordable College Tuition plan when their children were small and then when they finished high school, they got four years of tuition at an Alabama university. The program invested the money paid by parents and used the earnings to pay tuition. But it ran into trouble in 2008 when the stock market plunged, and it no longer had the assets to cover full tuition for all participants.