Douglas Co., Colorado’s Scholarship Program

Larue v. Colorado Board of Education
Institute for Justice and Colorado Parents Defended School Choice in the Rocky Mountain State

	Donovan and Alexandra Doyle plan to go to a school with a college-prep program their parents feel is the best fit for them.
	IJ school choice parents Mark and Jeanette Anderson plan to send their son Max to a school with a math and science curriculum that better fits his interests and needs.

The Douglas County School Board enacted a pilot school choice program to determine whether providing greater choice to its residents yields benefits for its students similar to those realized by programs enacted in other states.  The school district offers modest scholarships to 500 students that enable their parents to send them to private schools at a fraction of the cost of educating them in the Douglas County public schools.

The ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and several Colorado organizations and taxpayers sued the school board, school district, Colorado Department of Education, and the state school board in two separate lawsuits to stop the program.  Despite clear case law rejecting their claims, they allege that because some parents will choose religious schools for their children’s education, the program violates the state constitution’s prohibition on aid to religious schools.  They also allege various violations of Colorado’s education statutes for funding public education.

Representing four families who intend to use scholarships for their children, the Institute for Justice moved to intervene in both lawsuits to protect the interests of these and similar families.  These families—and not the schools their children will attend—are the real beneficiaries of the Douglas County, Colo., school choice program.  In trying to characterize these programs as a form of “aid” to the private schools rather than to parents, school choice opponents ignore the private and independent choice that parents make when selecting the best available education for their children from a range of educational options.  It is parents—and not the government—who decide what school a child attends, and, importantly, the government neither encourages nor discourages parents from selecting a religious school.  No child attends any of the choice schools without the free and independent choice of a parent.  The Institute for Justice intends to defend the role of the parents as the beneficiaries of the program and as decision-makers independent of the school district and any other governmental body.

Those who have filed suit to block this program’s implementation filed their lawsuits in state court in Denver and allege no federal constitutional violations.  When it upheld a similar scholarship program that Ohio enacted for children in the Cleveland public schools, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially foreclosed any such claim, making it clear that a program such as Douglas County’s is constitutional under the federal Constitution’s Establishment of Religion Clause.  The Institute for Justice believes that the Colorado courts will follow the lead of the Supreme Courts of Ohio and Wisconsin, which have interpreted their state constitutional religion clauses in a manner similar to the U.S. Supreme Court’s reading of the Establishment of Religion Clause.  Indeed, many years ago, the Colorado Supreme Court rejected an effort by Americans United for Separation of Church and State to invalidate a Colorado higher education scholarship program that permitted students to use their benefits at religious colleges they selected.

Not only is the Douglas County school choice program constitutional, it also makes fiscal sense, saving taxpayers money they would otherwise have to spend to educate each child in the program.