Posted on 09/25/2001 9:36:37 AM PDT by Alissa
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday it will decide whether vouchers, a program endorsed by President Bush that uses tax dollars to pay student tuition at religious schools, are constitutional.
The justices, getting an early start on their new term that begins next Monday, agreed to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that struck down an experimental private school voucher program in Cleveland on the grounds it violated constitutional church-state separation.
The high court accepted the recommendation of the Bush administration to resolve once and for all whether such programs were a permissible way to expand educational choices for children enrolled in failing public schools.
``This is probably the most important church-state case in the last half-century,'' said Barry Lynn of the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State. ``It will be a historic showdown over government funding of religion.''
Voucher supporters agreed on the case's significance.
``This is the most important educational opportunity case since Brown v. Board of Education,'' Clint Bolick of the group Institute for Justice said, referring to the landmark 1954 ruling that ended school segregation.
The Cleveland program has allowed some 4,000 students from mostly low-income families to receive tuition vouchers of up to $2,500 apiece to attend other private or public schools if their parents decided local schools did not meet their needs.
The appeals court struck down the program because it used tax money to pay student tuition for schools with a religious affiliation, promoting religious education.
CASE MAY HAVE SWEEPING NATIONAL CONSEQUENCES
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the closely watched case early next year, with a decision due by the end of June. If the court upholds the Cleveland program, it would have sweeping national consequences for education policy.
The Supreme Court, with a 5-4 conservative majority, has handed down a string of recent rulings that lowered the wall of church-state separation by allowing some state involvement with religious schools. But it has never decided the voucher issue.
Supporters of vouchers maintained they promote competition in education and force public schools to improve while opponents argued they threaten the fiscal integrity of the nation's public school system.
School vouchers were a centerpiece of Bush's education platform during his presidential campaign.
The Ohio Pilot Project Scholarship program started in 1995 and covered kindergarten through eighth grade. The only other larger voucher program involving religious schools was in Milwaukee.
Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the Bush administration's top courtroom lawyer, said the Ohio program ``distributes educational aid on neutral terms ... without regard to religion.''
He said private choice helped ensure that the government was not seen as endorsing religion.
In one appeal to the Supreme Court, Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery said the case presented ``a fundamental constitutional issue of profound importance to education policy in the United States.'' Alabama, Delaware, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina all supported the appeal.
Private schools in Cleveland and five Cleveland families participating in the program also filed appeals.
Opponents of the program, including the American Civil Liberties Union, argued the appeals should be rejected.
They said the appeals court in its ruling properly applied a 1973 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a private school tuition payment program.
Government school, like government journalism, is based on the premise of "objective truth" which is actually an illegitimate "Establishment." The First Amendment is deeply suspicious of "objective truth."
Wrong - Both lower courts that have considered this particular case have both struck down vouchers as being against the Establishment Clause
The police and fire departments in my city are both horrible and I never use them. I'm thinking of trying to withdraw my tax money from them too.
sure that it won't be the end of PRIVATE education??
Once they send gov't checks to a private school they will begin to issue new "standards". Slippery slope, ask Grove City College, who had to submit to federal rules on all sorts of stuff, even though the school took no federal aid, just their students received federal student loans. since then they are one of I think 3 schools in the country that take no federal aid nor do their students!!!
FWIW, we put our children in a Christian school this year, I don't like having to pay twice for it, and I could spend the money on other unimportant things (like food/clothing/shelter). It's probably one of the best decisions we ever made. And in this case, I think it's unConstitutional that my children must suffer through a secular lack of education.
This is where he has no choice under the present system: he pays in part for your kid in taxes, and he pays in full for his kid in tuition. You pay for your kid (in the same part as him) in taxes. Everything else is the same: you both paid top dollar for the house and you both will get top dollar when you sell. You mobility is greater than his, because there are more public schools around than private schools. Most areas of the United States are not within a reasonable reach of a private school. So your sacrifice of moving to a good school district does not compare to his sacrifice of paying twice when you pay once and being tied to one private school that suits his need.
It goes further than that Conspirator, the Federal Government pays ROTC scholarships directly to Jesuit schools to educate its military officers - Marquette, Notre Dame, Penn, Villanova to name a few. This is the government itself choosing specific religious schools to perform a service it wants/needs.
Funny how this is not a problem unless NEA jobs are put at risk...
subgator
Where did you receive you education in Constitutional Law?
"Gov't checks" will be found to be unconstitutional if applied to funding schools of any sort not related to our national defense. This means that ALL schools not covered under our constitutional provision for self defense will become "private". No law could ever eliminate "private" schools, but obeying the law of the constitution could possibly eliminate government-funded "public" schools.
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