High court is set to make history on school vouchers

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This Wednesday, Feb. 20, history will be made in the U.S. Supreme Court. Friends of mine will be in our nation's capital that day to listen as justices hear arguments in the landmark case from Cleveland concerning the constitutionality of school vouchers under the First Amendment.

At issue is whether such an arrangement amounts to outright government aid to parochial schools and thus violates the First Amendment ban on an established state religion.

It is a day long awaited by many on both sides in this, one of the great, long-running debates of our time over the right of parents to choose the schools their children attend without financial penalty.

Six years ago, Ohio lawmakers enacted one of the first school-voucher programs in the nation, following an embryonic program in Milwaukee.

Limited to inner-city Cleveland, the Ohio program offers alternatives to children in that city's desperately failing public schools where, The New York Times noted this week, "barely a third of public school students graduate from high school." In this, Cleveland schools have much in common with the disastrously failing public schools of inner-city St. Louis and Kansas City, as well as those of countless urban centers from coast to coast.

In the current school year, Ohio has awarded publicly financed vouchers, worth as much as $2,250, to 4,456 students in kindergarten through the eighth grade, mostly from families living at or below the poverty line. Each is permitted to attend one of the 50 private schools that has agreed to accept them. Most are Catholic or other sectarian schools.

The high court will be hearing an appeal from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the Cleveland program was unconstitutional in that it had the "impermissible effect of promoting sectarian schools." (Some years back, the high court had declined to hear an appeal on the Milwaukee program.)

In ruling against the program, the lower appeals court ignored the clear direction of Supreme Court rulings in this area of First Amendment jurisprudence. For more than 20 years, the high court has been ruling that where resources are directed to parents -- not the private schools themselves -- and the choice is made by parents, then no constitutional problem exists and the program may proceed.

Analogizing the program to the most successful social-education program ever passed, Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice says, "It's basically a GI Bill for kids." The institute is a public-interest law firm that has defended the Milwaukee and Ohio programs as well as a statewide program passed by Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida.

"Not a single dollar crosses the threshold of a religious school until a parent chooses not to avail himself or herself of a public school."

A decision is likely to be handed down by the high court in June.

There's a lot riding on this one, and it's no accident that proponents of school choice, such as this writer, are among those most eagerly awaiting what we hope, pray and believe will be a favorable ruling from our nation's highest court. In that event, the battle for parental freedom to choose any school will begin anew, but with one large difference: The old canard about unconstitutionality will have been cast into history's dustbin along with the ugly vestiges of 19th-century religious bigotry that gave it birth.

Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.