There has been an ongoing battle of the Lindsey Nichole Henry Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Act in Oklahoma. One court ruled the vouchers were unconstitutional. Some school districts were suing parents who used the vouchers. The Supreme Court of Oklahoma ruled that the school districts can’t do that.
The Lindsey Nichole Henry Scholarships for Students for Disabilities Act was signed into law around two years ago. The funding for the scholarships came from the funds that were set aside for public schools to run their Special Education programs.
The vouchers allowed parents to move their child from a school that was not meeting their child’s need to one that can. The vouchers would help pay for the tuition that a private school required.
Two school districts in Oklahoma, the Jenks school district, and the Union school district, filed a lawsuit against a group of parents who wanted to use the voucher to pay for tuition at a private school. The lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of the Lindsey Nichole Henry Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Act.
District Judge Rebecca Nightingale presided over the case. She decided to strike down the Lindsey Nichole Henry Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Act. The judge said that requiring public school districts to fund private school scholarships for special needs students violates the Oklahoma Constitution.
The lawsuit was appealed. The Oklahoma state Supreme Court heard the case. Vice Chief Justice Tom Colbert decided that the Jenks school district, and the Union school district, “did not have legal standing to sue parents of special needs children during efforts to spike the Lindsey Nichole Henry Scholarship for Students with Disabilities Program.”
Vice Chief Justice Tom Colbert wrote:
“The funds at issue are not taxes from taxpayers in the districts’ county revenue streams that a county assessor is improperly reducing or disposing of, but part of the Legislature’s general grant to the districts, through the State Department of Education.
Because the school districts are not the ones charged with the duty to provide free public education, the Legislature’s withholding of certain funds, even if it is unconstitutional, does not violate a constitutionally protected interest of the school districts themselves, because they are merely the Legislature’s vehicle.”
In other words, the judge for the Oklahoma state Supreme Court said that even if using the Lindsey Nichole Henry Scholarship for Students with Disabilities vouchers for tuition at private schools was unconstitutional, that does not give the right to the school districts to sue parents who use the vouchers that way. Previous to the decision, many people felt that the choice of the two school districts to sue parents was vindictive.
Image by Brian Turner on Flickr