How the Ohio Vouchers Program Violates the Establishment Clause

Introduction

The Ohio Vouchers Program is a school voucher program in which students are selected through a lottery process from the Cleveland City School District. The program selects students based on financial need. These vouchers or tuition grants allow parents the “choice” to use them in private secular or religious schools within the Cleveland district and any districts that have registered with the Ohio Vouchers Program. Depending on the income level of each student, a student can receive vouchers that cover 90% of a school’s tuition. But the overall limit that a student may receive is $2,500. Ohio Revised Code states the guidelines of the program in statute § 3313.974 to 3313.979.

The Ohio Vouchers program was created to respond to the failing of Cleveland’s public school system. With this program however, the vouchers are not supporting students to attend public school in the Cleveland school district. The surrounding school districts can accept the vouchers but have not done so since the program has started. This program is hurting the Cleveland public school system by diverting money that should be going to improve public schools but instead being put in private schools which are largely religious schools. The program continues to hurt not only the public school district but also the parents of the students who try to take advantage of the program. Parents are left with no alternative than to choose a nonpublic school and even then a religiously private school.

Of the non-public schools that participate in the Ohio vouchers program, 82% are religious schools. Almost 88% to 96% of the student who participated in the program have enrolled or is attending a religious school. So the government funds that are being d...

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...s are Unconstitutional Under Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756 (1973)

A key reference that is to be considered in deciding whether the Establishment Clause is in violation by the Ohio Voucher Program, then look to Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756 (1973). The courts struck down a New York program with the same idea as the Ohio Voucher program. The New York program helped low-income parents send their children to certain primary and secondary schools which included religiously private schools, with partial reimbursement for tuition from the state. This mirrors the Ohio Vouchers program very closely because the majority of schools that participated in the program were religious institutions. They also had money being given to parents with the “choice” than direct to the schools.