Support list containing pair of (str, dict) in sort

I'd like to do a query where the sort parameter to find allows me to sort on a meta field for $text search:

    results = COMBINED.find(

        {'$text': {'$search': 'whatever'}},

        limit=limit,

        fields={'score': {'$meta': 'textScore'}},

        sort=[('score', {'$meta': 'textScore'})]

    )

The projection works but having the sort produces the following error: "TypeError: second item in each key pair must be 1, -1, '2d', 'geoHaystack', or another valid MongoDB index specifier."