Suit was filed this week in a Georgia state trial court challenging on free exercise grounds the eligibility requirements for participating in the Georgia Promise Scholarship Program. Plaintiff families live in districts with low-performing public schools. The Promise Scholarship Program requires a student to be enrolled for one year in a failing school in order to qualify for funds to use for alternatives. The complaint (full text) in Tootle v. Green, (GA Super., filed 8/24/2026), alleges in part:
3. Each family knows they could obtain a free education at their assigned public schools. But they also know that their assigned public schools would substantially interfere with their children’s religious education and that public schools impose a pressure to conform to contrary viewpoints and lifestyles. From experience, they know that every subject would be taught in a secular manner, and that full school days would leave their children with little time for additional religious instruction. Plaintiffs also know that peers and teachers would favor secular ways of thinking that denigrate their children’s faith and pressure their children to hide their rich spiritual heritage....
6. ... [T]o be eligible, the Promise Scholarship generally requires that a child must have been enrolled in a public school through two consecutive state enrollment counts—roughly one full school year—before becoming eligible (the attendance requirement), and the child must be assigned to a failing public school (the assignment requirement).
7. Plaintiffs regard both the attendance requirement and the assignment requirement as burdens on their free exercise. The attendance requirement substantially burdens free exercise by opening scholarship access only if Plaintiffs forfeit their right to provide a religious education to their children by enrolling them in public school for two semesters. The assignment requirement substantially burdens free exercise by opening scholarship access only if Plaintiffs subject their families to the stress and financial loss of moving to a failing public school district—harms Plaintiffs believe their religion obliges them to avoid.
8. These substantial burdens would be resolved if Defendant granted a religious accommodation from the attendance and the assignment requirements, so that Plaintiffs would no longer be compelled to forfeit their religious exercise to access public benefits....
WRDW News reports on the lawsuit.