Appeals court could be right in banning school vouchers
May 15th, 2008, 4:45 pm · 1 Comment · posted by Le Templar
Scottsdale resident Andrea Weck and daughter Lexie have been advocates for state-funded private school scholarships (from www.ij.org).
Libertarians and school choice advocates aren’t going to like it, but I have to admit it’s hard to argue with today’s ruling from the Arizona Court of Appeals that private school vouchers violate the state constitution.
This case dealt with a couple of new scholarship programs created by Legislature in 2006 to provide private tuition scholarships for disabled children and those in foster care who might find better education if their options weren’t limited to only public schools.
School choice advocates, including the Tribune Editorial Board, had thought these vouchers would be safe because of a previous Supreme Court ruling that said state tax credits which encourage people to donate to student tuition organizations didn’t run afoul of the Arizona Constitution.
But the appeals court said that previous ruling dealt only with the issue of whether the tax credits violated the state constitution’s equivalent of the First Amendment religion establishment clause. In creating the tax credits, the state said the STOs can pay for private tuitions at any school, church-affiliated or not, so there’s no attempt to support a specific religion, the appeals court said.
But in the new case, the critics of school vouchers pointed to a different section of the state constitution, Art. IX, Sect. 10, which says, “No tax shall be laid or appropriation of public money made in aid of any church, or private or sectarian school …”
The appeals court said that section makes it pretty clear the state can’t hand out scholarships or vouchers that wind up in the hands of private schools.
“Only by ignoring the plain text of the Arizona Constitution prohibiting state aid to private schools could we find the aid represented by the payment of tuition fees to such schools in this case constitutional,” the court wrote.
This dispute isn’t over, as defenders of the tuition scholarships have promised to appeal to the state Supreme Court. But in the meantime, school choice advocates need to start thinking about possible constitutional amendments to clear this hurdle. The Legislature puts such amendments before the voters every two years.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Funding for Private Education should be borne by its Beneficiaries and not by disinterested parties. Proponents of Vouchers would subsidize private (parochial) schools via the tax base…contrary to The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Public Policy would be ill-served by such an arrangement.