Fla. Court Hears School Vouchers Challenge

Updated 8:32 AM ET June 8, 2005

The state Supreme Court took up the legality of the nation's first statewide school voucher program, with the justices focusing on how it's funded and the implications for religion.

Voucher opponents argued Tuesday that the program unconstitutionally diverts money from public to private schools, and that it violates the separation of church and state provision of the state constitution.

Under the law, students at public schools that earn a failing grade from the state in two out of four years are eligible for vouchers to attend private schools. More than half of the 700-plus voucher students choose religious schools.

Florida's 1999 school voucher law has been in the lower courts for six years. The state Supreme Court judges have allowed the state to enforce the law while the case is on appeal. The court often takes months to decide cases.

Barry Richard, representing the state, told the court that lawmakers have the "quintessential power" to spend state money as they see fit, including spending state money on private school vouchers.

But the justices returned again and again to the meaning of the state constitutional provision saying it is a "paramount duty" of the state to provide for the education of children. That sentence is immediately followed by one saying the state "shall" establish a system of free public schools.

Voucher opponents argue that the wording means public schools are the one and only way that the state is allowed to meet its duty of educating children.

"That's the problem here," Justice Peggy Quince told Richard. "Where does the Legislature then get the authority to in fact have other forms of education?"

Richard replied that the Legislature can do anything not forbidden by the state constitution, and he argued that the constitution does not make public schools the exclusive way of educating children with state money.

Attorney John West presented the case of voucher opponents and fielded more questions about the church-state provision of the Florida Constitution, which bans state aid to churches or religious institutions.

"What the state is paying for ... is religious indoctrination of young children," West said.

About 1,500 people traveled to the capital by bus from around the state for a pro-voucher rally across the street from the court. Tenth-grader Johnny Buster said 15-student classes at his Christian school helped him to raise his grades.

Without vouchers, he said he would still be in public school, where his friends deal with classes that are twice as big and textbooks that are falling apart.

"The stuff we're learning, we're way ahead of them," he said.

But Ruth Cameron, a retired teacher from Navarre Beach who is the first named plaintiff in the case, said she went into the hearing confident and came out the same way.

"I've waited six years for this," she said. "We just keep waiting and hoping. But I think we win."

[C-span showed the court proceedings yesterday. See http://www.c-span.org]