Plaintiff, Melissa Jankowski and daughter. Source: Institute for Justice.

The Douglas County, Colorado, School District is facing a lawsuit less than one month after launching a revamped voucher program. It's not school choice opponents that are suing this time, but three Colorado families excluded from the program because district rules now prohibit them from using vouchers to choose religious schools.

School district officials told the Denver Post that the new program was "designed to meet the state constitutional limitations as outlined by the Colorado Supreme Court in its ruling last summer."

But lawyers from the Institute for Justice representing the parents argue the new rules exclude and discriminate.

Last summer, a split state Supreme Court overturned the district's original voucher program, which allowed parents to choose any eligible private school regardless of religious affiliation. Citing the state's no-aid-to-religion provision, also known as a "Blaine amendment," a plurality of the justices ruled the program violated the state's constitution because parents could choose religious schools.

Appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers for the district and parents argued that the state court's ruling would result in a program that violated the First Amendment and Due Process rights of parents.

The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet accepted or denied that petition.

School choice supporters have long argued that states must be neutral with respect to whether a participating school is religious or not. "Singling out religious schools is not even-handedness, it's discrimination," says Institute for Justice lawyer Michael Bindas. (more…)

Editor's note: This is the second of two posts we're running this week to commemorate the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.

As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the landmark Zelman Supreme Court case, its implications are widely visible in the expansion of voucher programs, such as those in Indiana and Louisiana, as well as the growth of tax credit scholarship programs from Florida to Arizona. But the primary Zelman principle - that parents can utilize scholarship funding to enroll in any qualified school that they believe will best educate their children - is also at the heart of an important court battle in Douglas County, Colorado.

Conceivably, Zelman could not only lead to the reinstatement of an innovative voucher approach that local school districts could adopt more broadly, but also provide a pillar for arguments to overturn Colorado’s discriminatory and prejudiced Blaine Amendments.

Beginning in June 2010, the Douglas County School District’s School Choice Task Force began a series of community discussions to align its programs with its overarching policy of “universal choice.” The purpose: to create “multiple pathways for educational success” and then to assist families in choosing the best educational program for their child. This led in March 2011 to the adoption of a pilot Choice Scholarship Program (CSP) whereby in the 2011-12 school year up to 500 families could receive either the lesser of a private school’s tuition or 75 percent of the per-pupil revenue the district received. This amounted to a scholarship of $4,575 for 2011-12.

Just before its implementation in fall 2011, the Denver District Court issued a permanent injunction against the program because it caused state funds to flow to religious schools, violating the Blaine Amendments in the Colorado constitution and the Public School Finance Act. The appeal to overturn this decision attracted high-powered support from the Colorado Attorney General, the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, the Institute for Justice on behalf of families that had received scholarships, and the school district itself. Zelman is at the heart of their legal briefs.

The Institute for Justice notes that neither the school district nor the state has any role in selecting the school in which the family enrolls, i.e., this is a private choice program that Zelman specifically endorsed as constitutional. Citing the Zelman decision, when a scholarship program “permits government aid to reach religious institutions only by way of the deliberate choices of numerous individual recipients, the circuit between government and religion is broken,” and any “incidental advancement of a religious mission…is reasonably attributable to the individual recipient, not to the government.” This principle of parental choice, which state supreme court decisions upholding voucher programs in Wisconsin and Ohio recognized even prior to Zelman, led an Indiana court this year to reject a challenge to the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program. Yet, for some reason, the Colorado trial court chose to ignore this precedent. (more…)

Washington D.C.: The Obama administration relents on funding for the D.C. voucher program and okays a deal that will allow a small expansion. (Washington Post)

New Hampshire: Gov. John Lynch (pictured here) vetoes a legislative proposal for tax credit scholarships, but some expect an override. (Concord Monitor)

Florida: Former Gov. Jeb Bush stresses school choice, accountability and common ground in a speech to Latino officials. (Associated Press)

North Carolina: A legislative proposal for tax credits scholarships has been rolled into a broader education reform bill in the state House. (Associated Press)

Pennsylvania: A proposed state budget would expand the tax credit scholarship program from $75 million to $150 million a year at the same time public school funding levels are kept the same. (Associated Press) The state senate passes a bill that would make it easier for traditional public schools to be converted into charter schools in financially troubled districts. (Bloomberg)

Colorado: Debate arises over the validity of a survey that finds a lack of support for the Douglas County School District's voucher program. (Education News Colorado) (more…)