According to AP, yesterday a Colorado state court granted a permanent injunction against implementation of a Douglas County (CO) Board of Education school voucher plan that would have given 500 students scholarships to apply to tuition at participating private school partners. Most of the partner schools were sectarian and most were located outside the school district. (See prior posting.) The voucher plan enrolls scholarship recipients in a new Choice Scholarship Charter School for pupil counting purposes in order to continue to receive state funds. In Larue v. Colorado Board of Education, (CO Dist. Ct., Aug. 13, 2011), the trial court, after finding that plaintiffs had standing, held that the voucher program violates a number of state constitutional provisions and the Public School Finance Act, as well as finding that the state contracting statute does not give school boards the power to contract with private schools to provide all a student's educational services.
The court concluded that the voucher program violates a state constitutional prohibition on state funds for sectarian schools, the state's free exercise clause, the ban on religious admissions criteria,ban on requirements to attend religious services and ban on teaching of sectarian doctrines in public schools. The voucher program also was found to violate state constitutional provisions on the integrity of the public school fund.
