Vermont taxpayer money can now go to religious schools as legal landscape shifts
Religious schools can receive public education dollars in Vermont, the settlements of two lawsuits reaffirmed following other states' cases and two U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
A.H. v. French and E.W. v. French were settled Nov. 30 between the plaintiffs — six students' families and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington — and the defendants — the Vermont Agency of Education and various Vermont school districts and school boards. The plaintiffs argued the policy of only allowing town tuition dollars to go to public schools and non-religious independent schools was discriminatory to those choosing a religious education. The state has long struggled with whether public funds could be applied to religious entities due to a possible violation of the separation of church and state and complications around financially supporting institutions which can exclude admitting students based upon their sexual orientation or gender identity.
These settlements came on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling over the summer in Carson v. Makin where Maine, which has a similar town tuitioning program to Vermont's, was told it could not exclude religious school tuition in situations where money could be applied to other independent schools.
After the Supreme Court decision that said the "free exercise" clause of the First Amendment was violated, the Vermont Agency of Education adjusted its policies and sent a memo to superintendents. Among the changes: school districts can't deny tuition payments to religious approved independent schools, requests for tuition payments to approved independent religious schools are to be treated the same as approved secular independent schools, and payment should be paid without regard to whether the school has provided tuition assistance to the student.
The outcome of the Vermont lawsuits allowed the families to be reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses and attorney's fees, according to Alliance Defending Freedom.
The town tuitioning program in Vermont largely applies to students who do not have a public school in their own hometown and whose local education tax dollars can be used to support their education in another town's school or an approved independent school. Until these recent rulings, religious schools were excluded.
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Contact reporter April Barton at abarton@freepressmedia.com or 802-660-1854. Follow her on Twitter @aprildbarton.
This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Vermont tuition money can now go to religious schools
