{"id":6262,"date":"2006-01-06T09:10:53","date_gmt":"2006-01-06T14:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6262"},"modified":"2006-01-06T09:10:53","modified_gmt":"2006-01-06T14:10:53","slug":"vouchers-lose-again-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/vouchers-lose-again-in-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Vouchers lose again in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

The surprise isn’t that the Florida Supreme Court struck down<\/a> Jeb Bush’s statewide voucher program; the surprise is that Bush ever thought he could win in the first place.<\/p>\n

The Florida Supreme Court struck down the state’s voucher system that allows some children to attend private schools at taxpayer expense, saying it violates the state constitution’s requirement of a uniform system of free public schools.<\/p>\n

Today’s 5-2 opinion in Bush v. Holmes struck down the Opportunity Scholarship Program, championed by Gov. Jeb Bush, which was the nation’s first statewide system of school vouchers. About 700 children statewide are using the program to attend a private or parochial school after transferring from a public school the state considers to be failing.<\/p>\n

Chief Justice Barbara Pariente, writing for the majority, said the program “diverts public dollars into separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools,” which are the sole means set out in the state constitution for educating Florida children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The legality of the program never withstood any scrutiny. A state district court said the program was unconstitutional; a state appeals court said the same thing; and now the state Supreme Court has finished the trifecta<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Article I, Section 3 of the state Constitution explains that “[n]o revenue of the state … shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid … of any sectarian institution.” For that matter, the state Constitution also insists, “Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high quality system of free public schools.” Jeb’s voucher program never stood a chance.<\/p>\n

The next thing to watch is the national impact. Two-thirds of the states — 37 in all — have provisions in their state constitutions similar to Florida’s, which suggests voucher proponents may have similar trouble elsewhere.<\/p>\n

With any luck, pro-voucher lawmakers will be discouraged from even trying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The surprise isn’t that the Florida Supreme Court struck down Jeb Bush’s statewide voucher program; the surprise is that Bush ever thought he could win in the first place. The Florida Supreme Court struck down the state’s voucher system that allows some children to attend private schools at taxpayer expense, saying it violates the state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}