{"id":16565,"date":"2012-11-26T18:30:09","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T23:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=16565"},"modified":"2012-11-26T18:30:09","modified_gmt":"2012-11-26T23:30:09","slug":"a-sooner-state-win-for-school-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/16565\/a-sooner-state-win-for-school-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sooner State Win for School Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2012\/11\/26\/oklahoma-supreme-court-throws-out-challenge-to-special-needs-scholarship-program\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rachel Sheffield<\/a> of the Heritage Foundation shows the depths sunk to by opponents of school choice:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Last Tuesday, Oklahoma\u2019s special-needs students received a pre-Thanksgiving win. The state\u2019s Supreme Court ruled that two school districts that had challenged the legality of the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Program\u2014a voucher program for special-needs students\u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.becketfund.org\/oklahoma-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-disabled-students\/\">were out of line<\/a> in bringing the lawsuit.<\/p>\n<p>The school districts had challenged the scholarship program on the basis that it violated the state\u2019s Blaine Amendment by allowing scholarship money to be used at religious schools. Other opponents of school choice programs have time and again brought similar claims to the courts.<\/p>\n<p>Eric Baxter of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.becketfund.org\/oklahoma-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-disabled-students\/\">Becket Fund for Religious Liberty<\/a> said that the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in this case \u201cis a great victory for both religious freedom and the disabled.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s hope the school districts drop their paranoia that allowing disabled kids to go to a private religious school of their choice somehow creates an official state church for Oklahoma,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.becketfund.org\/oklahoma-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-disabled-students\/\">said Baxter<\/a>. \u201cThe message from the Supreme Court today is unequivocal: These school districts should stop spending taxpayer dollars suing their most vulnerable students and focus on what they are supposed to be doing\u2014teaching kids.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here, here!<\/p>\n<p>No one seriously thinks that allowing a college freshman to spend taxpayer money on tuition at a religious university violates the First Amendment\u2019s Establishment Clause.\u00a0 The same holds true when a high school senior attends a sectarian primary or secondary school.\u00a0 That school choice opponents would try to deny disabled children the same freedom of choice available to able-bodied adults shows how badly the public sector wants to maintain its monopoly on students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rachel Sheffield of the Heritage Foundation shows the depths sunk to by opponents of school choice: Last Tuesday, Oklahoma\u2019s special-needs students received a pre-Thanksgiving win. The state\u2019s Supreme Court ruled that two school districts that had challenged the legality of the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Program\u2014a voucher program for special-needs students\u2014were out of line in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[231,64,716,1102,3116,1447,3310],"class_list":["post-16565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-choice","tag-education","tag-first-amendment","tag-heritage-foundation","tag-opportunity","tag-reform","tag-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16565"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16570,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16565\/revisions\/16570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}