Sarah Parshall Perry
In a crushing blow to school choice, South Carolina’s highest court recently struck down, by a 3-2 vote, the state’s fledgling voucher program as unconstitutional. The result is a mad scramble for what to do about voucher funds already distributed, with lawmakers keen on finding a constitutional alternative.
In the meantime, though, the decision leaves families in South Carolina—specifically, those representing some 3,000 children from low and moderate-income families—once again at a loss for choices beyond public school.
Families below certain income limits that participated in South Carolina’s Education Scholarship Trust Fund (ESTF) program were awarded accounts worth $6,000 for use on education products and services like tutoring, private school tuition, and textbooks. Enacted in 2023, the ESTF made South Carolina the 19th state in the country to enact a similar account-style educational option.
But it didn’t last. Together with a group of parents, a state chapter of the notoriously Left-aligned teacher’s union, the National Education Association (NEA), sued the state, arguing that the voucher program violated Article XI, Section 4 of the South Carolina Constitution.
That provision reads:
No money shall be paid from public funds nor shall the credit of the State or any of its political subdivisions be used for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.
But the public funds don’t “benefit” religious institutions, they benefit families, who are the direct recipients of the funds. And the question of whether public funds can be used for private (and even religious) education has already been asked and answered by the Supreme Court in Carson v. Makin in 2022.
In that case, the Court ruled 6-3 that Maine could not prevent parents from using otherwise generally available state school choice funds at religious schools simply because those schools provided religious instruction. When families receive government funds to choose a religious K-12 school for their children, » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/south-carolinas-supreme-court-gives-school-choice-f-did-they-get-it-right