Parents sue NC over tax-paid vouchers to private schools with religious requirements
Seven North Carolina parents filed a lawsuit Monday in Wake County Superior Court claiming that the state’s school voucher program is unconstitutional, in part because it provides funding to schools that discriminate against students or their families on religious grounds.
The lawsuit, filed with support from the North Carolina Association of Educators and the National Education Association, challenges the state’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, which pays $4,200 per year toward tuition at private schools.
The program has been controversial since it was launched in 2014. Supporters say it gives parents more choice in educating their children. Opponents say it siphons millions of tax dollars away from public schools each year and requires little accountability from private schools that receive the funds.
The suit seeks to halt the disbursement of funds through the vouchers.
The N.C. Attorney General’s Office said Monday it was reviewing the filing.
The complainants in the suit are parents of children who attend public schools in Durham, Wake, Cumberland and Randolph counties. According to the suit, all of them pay taxes in the state and have school-age children who cannot attend certain private schools with the help of a state voucher because their religious beliefs, identity or sexual orientation would cause the children to be barred from admission or expelled.
‘Religious dictates’
Many religious private schools have policies barring the enrollment of or allowing the expulsion of students who refute the school’s statements of faith. Students also can be barred from some schools if their parents’ beliefs don’t conform.
The suit says the voucher program directs funds to schools “that divide communities on religious lines, disparage many North Carolinians’ faiths and identities, and coerce families into living under religious dictates.”
It says the vouchers fund discrimination on the basis of religion, and that, “Families’ ability to participate in the Program is limited by their religious beliefs and their willingness to cede control of their faith to a religious school.”
The suit also says the program discriminates against students and parents “based on who they love or the gender they know themselves to be, and against those with religious beliefs that do not condemn homosexuality, bisexuality, or gender non-conformity.”
The suit says the program runs counter to the N.C. Constitution, which says, “All persons have a natural and inalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences, and no human authority shall, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience.”
The state supreme court ruled in 2015 that North Carolina could use public tax dollars to help children attend private and religious schools.
Donald Bryson, CEO of the right-leaning non-profit Civitas Institute, said the suit filed Monday is essentially the same argument made in the earlier lawsuit, Hart vs. State of North Carolina, but at a time when the plaintiffs hope to find more sympathetic judges.
“None of the facts of the program have changed” since that case, Bryson said in a telephone interview with The News & Observer. “It’s the same argument. They’re just trying to argue against religious education.”
Bryson said the state constitution does not bar the state from helping families pay for private or religious education, whether it’s Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or unaffiliated with any faith. If a Muslim parent is unable to find an appropriate faith-based school nearby, he said, “That is not the fault of any Christian school.”
North Carolina should be proud, he said, that the state supports private and religious education as an alternative to traditional public schools.
“The point is to provide families with an option that works best for their child,” he said.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are:
▪ Tamika Walker Kelly, NCAE president, a Fayetteville school teacher and a Catholic who says her religious beliefs would cause her daughter not to be admitted to some private schools funded by the voucher program.
▪ Kristy Moore, vice president of the NCAE, a Durham school teacher and a Baptist who says she does not subscribe to the religious tenets of many voucher-funded private schools.
▪ Amanda Howell of Randolph County, mother of a son with autism who needs the resources of a private school but can’t attend one in his county because they are all Christian and Howell is not a Christian.
▪ Kate and Elizabeth Meininger of Fayetteville, whose child could not attend most voucher-funded schools because Kate is a Muslim and the women, who are married, are lesbians.
▪ John Sherry of Wake County, who could not enroll his child in many voucher-funded private schools because he is gay, is married to a man and does not believe that homosexuality, bisexuality, or gender nonconformity are sinful.
▪ Rivca (“Rikki”) Rachel SaNogeuira, whose daughter attends public school in Durham and qualifies for a voucher but can’t attend many private schools because she is Jewish.
This story was originally published July 27, 2020 at 4:50 PM with the headline "Parents sue NC over tax-paid vouchers to private schools with religious requirements."
