Public education recorded a key legal victory on Aug. 16 when a Florida appeals court shot down a state school voucher program as a violation of Florida's constitutional guarantee of church-state separation.

The 2-1 ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeals affirms a lower court decision and scuttles a five-year-old voucher program considered to be the centerpiece education policy of Gov. Jeb Bush. It allows students in public schools that receive failing grades from the state for two consecutive years to attend private schools, including religious schools, at taxpayer expense. The governor's administration is expected to continue the voucher program while the latest decision is appealed to the Florida Supreme Court. Currently, about 730 students use "opportunity scholarship" vouchers in Florida, the Sun-Sentinel reports, and about half attend religious schools.

"This decision is a triumph for public schools and Florida's taxpayers," said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association, a merged affiliate of the AFT and NEA. FEA spearheaded a coalition of parents, education and civic groups that launched a challenge to the voucher law the day after it was enacted, and Ford believes this latest decision will send a strong message to both the governor and the legislature.

"This ruling should go a long way toward stopping the financial abuses by some of the schools that have been accepting vouchers," he said. "We know there will be attempts in the next legislative session to once again expand these unconstitutional vouchers and we call for a moratorium on voucher expansion until the Florida Supreme Court makes its final ruling on vouchers."

The appeals court ruling was a widely watched one in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of a voucher program in Cleveland. The high court's action did not, however, prohibit state courts from considering whether or not voucher programs violated their own laws and constitutions in such key matters as church-state separation and guarantees of uniform, high-quality education systems.

In Florida, the District Court found that the voucher program violates the state constitution's "no-aid" provision, which mandates that no revenue of the state shall ever be taken from public treasury "directly or indirectly" in aid of any religious institution. The Florida ruling comes less than two months after Colorado's Supreme Court declared a state voucher law violated similar protections in its state constitution.

(August 2004)