The school-choice movement is sweeping the nation like wildfire. Texas recently became the sixteenth state to enact legislation providing universal education savings accounts, which allow families to use public funds for private schools and homeschooling. At least two significant developments ignited the movement.
First, the pandemic gave parents a clear window into how much public schools were failing their children. This led to increased demand for alternative types of schools, whether private, charter, hybrid models, or homeschooling.
Second, a triumvirate of Supreme Court cases: Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer (2017), Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), and Carson v. Makin (2022) reversed decades of Supreme Court precedent that misinterpreted the Establishment Clause to effectively bar public funding from flowing to religious schools. Instead of barring public funding to religious schools, the Supreme Court made clear in these cases that the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause requires states to provide religious schools with the same public benefits they provided to secular private schools.
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