In the 1949 Looney Tunes short “Mouse Wreckers,” two mind-manipulating rodents named Hubie and Bertie try to chase award-winning mouser Claude Cat out of his home by driving him crazy. They bang him on the head with a fireplace log, throw a stick of dynamite on Claude’s nap cushion, and even frame him for antagonizing a bulldog, who pummels him.
The last straw is when the mice nail all the living room furniture to the floor while Claude is napping. Thinking he is stuck on the ceiling, he jumps up to what he thinks is the floor. When he opens a bottle of nerve tonic, all the liquid “rises” to what Claude thinks is the ceiling.
Similar confusion over ceilings and floors is at the heart of a legal battle in Utah, where a trial court judge ruled that the legislature figuratively bumped its head on the state constitution when it passed the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program in 2023.
Third District Judge Laura Scott wrote in her ruling that the state constitutional mandate that the Legislature establish and maintain a public education system is a ceiling. The state cannot create alternatives. If it were a floor, the legislature would have the authority to create other publicly funded education programs in addition to the public school system.
In separate appeals filed last week, the Utah Attorney General’s Office, along with two parents represented by the Institute for Justice and EdChoice Legal Advocates, each say that the judge erred in calling the constitution’s education clause a ceiling. They argue it is a floor.
“The legislature is already meeting its constitutional mandate to provide a free public education system devoid of sectarian control and open to all children. Plaintiffs do not argue otherwise,” the state’s appeal reads. “The district court recognized that Plaintiffs’ Article [X] claim fails as a matter of law if the educational provisions set a floor rather than a ceiling on legislative power.”
However, the lower court “created new limitations on the Legislature out of whole cloth,” according to the parents’ appeal.
The Utah Fits All Scholarship Program took effect in the fall of 2024 and gives eligible K-12 students up to $8,000 a year for private school tuition and other approved costs. In the first year, more than 27,000 students applied for 10,000 available scholarships. Unlike in South Carolina, where families were left scrambling last year after the state Supreme Court struck down its scholarship program, Utah families are allowed to continue using the program while the case is under appeal and will likely to be able to finish out the school year.
One of two cases that the judge relied on was Bush v. Holmes, which the parents’ attorneys called “the sole outlier” on the list of court decisions from other states.
The 1999 complaint challenged the Florida Opportunity Scholarship Program. In it, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the program violated the constitution’s provision requiring a “uniform” system of public schools for all students.
Scott wrote that the Florida provision “acts as a limitation on legislative power” and that in spelling out how something must be done, it effectively forbids it from being done differently.
The Utah parents’ attorneys called Florida’s provision “unique” and different from the broader language in the Utah Constitution.
“But even if Florida had analogous language to Utah’s Education Article — and it does not — Holmes is a singularly unpersuasive decision. One need only compare the majority and dissenting opinions to appreciate how flawed the majority’s reasoning was and how glaring are its many errors.”
For the thousands of families who relied on the program, the stakes couldn’t be higher as they now find themselves under the shadow cast by the district court’s order just months before a new school year begins.
“In the interest of removing that shadow as soon as practicable so that Utah families can plan for their children’s upcoming academic year without disruption, Parents ask for this Court’s review,” the attorneys wrote in the parents’ appeal.
At the end of Mouse Wreckers, Claude races screaming from the house and clings, trembling, to a tree. The mice roast cheese and congratulate themselves.
“That upside-down room was the pièce de résistance,” Bertie says to a laughing Hubie.
Attorneys defending Utah’s scholarship families hope the state’s high court will flip the state constitution right-side up.
