of by (in alphabetical order) John Garrett Clawson, Cassie Davis, Reynaldo De La Garza, Katie Floyd , Sarah Pollock
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The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, has been a proponent of ESAs with the specific understanding that they provide a work-around to state Blaine Amendments. They noted in a recent report titled "Education Savings Accounts: Advancing Choice in States with Blaine Amendments" thatthat (Burke & Butcher, 2016):
"The defining feature of ESAs—that parents can make multiple choices for their children’s education—helped them survive a Blaine-based legal challenge in Arizona where the state supreme court had deemed a voucher program unconstitutional. In the 2013 Arizona Court of Appeals’ unanimous opinion, Judge Jon Thompson wrote that '[t]he ESA does not result in an appropriation of public money to encourage the preference of one religion over another, or religion per se over no religion. Any aid to religious schools would be a result of the genuine and independent private choices of the parents.'" (Burke & Butcher, 2016)
At the present time, legislation passed in Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, and Tennessee has been been upheld by each of those states' supreme courts. However, in September 2016, The the Nevada Supreme Court struck down the state’s education savings account law, ruling that while the premise of using taxpayer money for private education is constitutional, the method used to fund the ESA program is not. The court held that the Legislature’s legislature’s discretion to encourage other methods of education is not limited by the state Constitutionconstitution. Moreover, the Court indicated that funds placed in education savings accounts belong to parents and are not “public funds”; therefore, ESAs are not in violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against using public money for sectarian purposes. This has been hailed as a victory by proponents of the legislation. However, justices said the Nevada decision also stated that the Legislature legislature cannot divert money specifically authorized for public schools to private educational programs (like tuition at parochial schools). Thus, the Court held that the use of the Distributive School Account funding for ESAs undermines the Nevada Constitution’s mandate to fund public education. Proponents believe that this constitutional issue can be resolved through legislation revising the flow of money into ESAs. In light of this, the state’s Republican governor has indicated that he will prioritize the issue of ESA funding in the 2017 Legislature when it convenes in February.
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“School Choice in America,” EdChoice, last modified Oct. 28, 2016, http://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/school-choice-in-america.
S.B. 1178, Texas 84th Cong. (2015).
S.B. 2695, Mississippi 114th Cong. (2015).
S.B. 302, Nevada 302nd Cong. (2015).
S.B. 431, Tennessee 431st Cong. (2015).
S.N. 850, Florida 116th Cong. (2014).