Court Affirms Tuition for Students at Religious School

AP ^ | 6/2/21 | Kathy McCormack

[marshmallow]

A federal appeals court on Wednesday explained its decision to stop Vermont from excluding tuition funding for students who attend a religious school, saying a lower court ruling from earlier this year did not go far enough to accomplish that.

The opinion followed an injunction granted by the 2nd Circuit in February against the state, and in light of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that said states can’t cut religious schools from programs that send public money to private education.

The appeals court had issued its injunction on behalf of four Catholic high school students, their parents, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington.

The case deals with a voucher program that allows students in communities that don’t have schools or are not part of supervisory unions to attend schools of their choice, including approved private institutions. The students applied for tuition reimbursement at the Catholic high school, but were denied on the ground that the school is a religiously affiliated school.

[Hootowl99]

Interesting information. Thanks for posting…

In.Vermont, the state has a tuition program for private school students in specific circumstances. Excluded though were religious schools because, well, they're religious. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled exclusion on these grounds is not constitutional.

My interpretation is that the Federal district judge in Vermont really didn't want to conform to the Supreme Court decision so came up with a weasel way to keep this tied up in court by ruling that although this religious discrimination while unconstitutional, still issued an injunction against reimbursement so that Vermont could adjust their regs. By this, the District judge intentionally set up a ping pong situation by which the court could keep this issue in litigation and delay reimbursement for an indeterminate time. The Appeals Court slapped this down. Lawfare collusion by the District judge.

In passing, the article mentions a similar religious discrimination case from Massachusetts that a different Appeals Court has ruled in favor of the State and has been appealed to the Supreme Court.