{"id":910,"date":"2003-12-04T10:20:44","date_gmt":"2003-12-04T15:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/910.html"},"modified":"2003-12-04T10:20:44","modified_gmt":"2003-12-04T15:20:44","slug":"colorados-religious-school-voucher-plan-struck-down-by-state-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/colorados-religious-school-voucher-plan-struck-down-by-state-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado&#8217;s religious school voucher plan struck down by state court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Once in a great while, I make an accurate prediction. Not all of the time, of course, but it&#8217;s fun when it happens.<\/p>\n<p>Way back in April, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/000220.html\">I said<\/a> that I believed Colorado&#8217;s statewide voucher plan for religious schools would be struck down for its inconsistency with the state constitution.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/i2i.org\/Publications\/ColoradoConstitution\/cnart9.htm\">Article 9, Sec. 7<\/a> of the Colorado Constitution says the state can never &#8216;make any appropriation&#8230; to help support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church or sectarian denomination,'&#8221; I said. &#8220;This language is unambiguous. Because this new voucher plan includes private religious schools, it will necessarily run afoul of this law.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Well, what do you know. A Denver state court yesterday <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/12\/04\/education\/04VOUC.html\">came to the same conclusion<\/a> I did.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The goals of the voucher program are laudable,&#8221; wrote the judge, Joseph E. Meyer III of District Court. &#8220;However, even great ideas must be implemented within the framework of the Colorado Constitution.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Though the state, led by ardent voucher advocate Gov. Bill Owens (R), has promised to appeal the decision, Meyer blocked implementation of the plan.<\/p>\n<p>For those of us who oppose vouchers and support public schools, this was a huge victory. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that public funding of private religious education was consistent with the First Amendment (a conclusion I certainly disagree with), leaving voucher opponents with one last hope &#8212; state constitutions.<\/p>\n<p>The Colorado case is the first case since the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision to challenge vouchers using a state constitutional provision. With this in mind, yesterday&#8217;s victory suggests we might be able to defeat similar voucher proposals elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once in a great while, I make an accurate prediction. Not all of the time, of course, but it&#8217;s fun when it happens. Way back in April, I said that I believed Colorado&#8217;s statewide voucher plan for religious schools would be struck down for its inconsistency with the state constitution. &#8220;Article 9, Sec. 7 of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}