U.S. Supreme Court school voucher ruling impact uncertain

U.S. Supreme Court school voucher ruling impact uncertain
 
By Kathryn Palmer
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Via Wyoming News Exchange
 
CHEYENNE — Tuition at St. Mary's Catholic School in Cheyenne is $3,700 per year. The school offers some scholarships, but like most private schools in Wyoming any tuition remains cost-prohibitive for many families looking for an alternative to traditional public school education.
A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling has the potential to change this reality in Wyoming, but it's unclear if, when or how it will take shape. Wyoming currently does not offer any kind of tuition tax-credit program - commonly referred to as a school voucher or education savings account - for private school tuition.
However, 18 other states, including neighboring Montana, have passed such a program into law. This policy trend has raised questions about the First Amendment's dueling clauses - separation of church and state and freedom of expression - and if it allows public money to fund religious education.
That debate came to a head last week.
On Tuesday, the nation's high court handed down its opinion in the case of Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which hinged on this question: Did the state of Montana engage in religious discrimination when it refused to allow a state tuition tax-credit program that subsidizes private school tuition to be used at a Christian school?
Montana is one of 37 states, including Wyoming, that has adopted the Blaine Amendment to its state constitution. It's a "no-aid" clause that prevents state money from going to religious schools. As more and more states have passed tuition tax-credit programs - or something similar - over the past decade, critics have held up the "no-aid" rule as one reason why that money can't be used to pay for religious school tuition.
But the "no-aid" argument effectively crumbled Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, said the Montana Supreme Court was wrong to exclude parents who want their student to attend a religious school from taking advantage of the state's tuition tax-credit program, which was signed into law in 2015.
"A State need not subsidize private education," Chief Justice John Roberts opined for the majority. "But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious."
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who has long advocated for the expansion of school voucher programs, extolled the Supreme Court's decision as "a historic victory."
"Montana and other states should be very clear about this historic decision: your bigoted Blaine Amendments and other restrictions like them are unconstitutional, dead and buried," she said in a news release published soon after the opinion was reached.
Across the border in Wyoming there is no tuition tax-credit program, so the court's decision will not directly affect the state's education policies - yet.
State Rep. Chuck Gray, R-Casper, introduced an education savings account bill to the Wyoming Legislature in both 2016 and 2017, but both died early deaths. Gray could not be reached for comment by press time Friday.
According to Brian Farmer, executive director of the Wyoming School Boards Association and former professor of constitutional law at the University of Wyoming, the "no-aid" clause that has prevented similar bills from passing in other states wasn't even mentioned during one of those legislative sessions that squashed Gray's bill.
Now that the Supreme Court has essentially voided the "no-aid" argument, Farmer said it's still "hard to say" whether this change will heighten Wyoming's interest in creating a tuition tax-credit program.
It's unclear if any Wyoming lawmakers are already looking to push for one in light of the ruling. Neither one of the Wyoming Legislature's education committee chairs responded to requests for comment by press time.
"We can speculate as to why Wyoming doesn't have those things. But in Wyoming you have to be careful because the (reason for the) absence of those things is unknown," said Farmer, whose organization supported an amicus curiae brief filed by the National School Boards Association, which argued against the constitutional merits of what the court decided Tuesday.
From a state-level perspective, "We felt that it is contrary to a longstanding history where the people of Wyoming, when passing the Constitution, chose to prohibit public dollars from being expended for sectarian purposes," said Farmer, who added that if a private school scholarship program comes to Wyoming, it could also muddy the state's highly transparent education reporting system.
For K-12 students in Wyoming, alternatives to traditional public schools are limited, and include four publicly funded, but privately operated charter schools, including a state-supported online school, home school, and a flurry of secular and religious private schools parents have to pay for out of their own pockets.
"Wyoming is far behind the times with regard to what other states have done in regard to educational opportunity," Cassie Craven, an attorney for the Wyoming Liberty Group, said. "I would hope this would encourage Wyoming to keep up with the times."
The libertarian-leaning lobbying and advocacy organization has followed the Espinoza case and supports the expansion of school choice policy in the state.
Craven, who characterized the Blaine Amendment as "bred in bigotry" and praised the Espinoza decision as "a pivotal civil rights determination," said that in her view, Tuesday's ruling is about "so much more than going to a private Christian school. It's about the family and the child's ability to choose a customized fit for their education needs, and to also have resources to make that happen."
Enacting something like an education savings account in Wyoming would create "really neat technical education - hub centers for high schoolers - that would honestly be far more accessible than some of our public school programming right now," Craven said.
For at least a couple of the private religious schools in Cheyenne, which rely on tuition dollars to stay open, the ruling was also a welcome one.
"I don't know how this will impact our school, but it would come at a good time, because a lot of private schools are struggling with enrollment numbers because of COVID-19," said Beth Thompson, marketing director at St. Mary's Catholic School, which has temporarily eliminated grades seven and eight due to low enrollment numbers.
"If it opens up in one state, then it's more of a possibility in other states. I know it's come up in Wyoming a time or two. ... I'm hoping this at least opens the door for this conversation to happen here," Thompson said. "It would incentivize a lot of parents to send their kids to St. Mary’s."
As for the constitutional implications of the Espinoza decision, which some critics say dealt a blow to the separation of church and state, Thompson's not sure what to make of it, but "I think it obviously kind of teeters on the line."
Cathy Lloyd, the principal at Destiny Christian Academy in Cheyenne, where tuition is $2,950 per year for high school students, lauded the ruling as a win for parents who want to pick the best learning environment for their children.
"I don't believe separation of church and state means the same thing as other people do. It's really about freedom of religion," Lloyd said. "There's a lot of ideology taught in public schools that a lot of parents don't agree with. Some people might say that's a religion."
Even though she has no philosophical qualms about public money paying for religious education in Wyoming, Lloyd did have one question: "If we get money from the state, what will they require of us?"
Only time can answer what a tuition tax-credit program would look like in Wyoming, but Tuesday's ruling makes clear religion will not be a part of the conversation, for better or worse.
"Hypothetically, a school that was overseen by the Church of Satan is part of a recognized religion. Even if it was offensive to the community, those schools could get the same public dollars as a Christian school, a Jewish school or a Muslim school," Farmer, the WSBA's director, said.
"The public has to be comfortable with the idea that this could be something different from what their faith or comfort level may be."