USCCB - (Office of Media Relations) - Supreme Court Ruling on Vouchers Hailed by USCCB Officials

Supreme Court Ruling on Vouchers Hailed by USCCB Officials

WASHINGTON (June 27, 2002) -- The Secretary for Education for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops welcomed today"s 5-4 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding a voucher program in Cleveland.

"The Court"s decision is a significant victory for parents"especially low-income parents"and re-enforces the basic right of all parents to choose the school they believe best serves the educational needs of their children," said Sister Glenn Anne McPhee, Secretary for Education of the USCCB, which represents the largest private religious school community in the nation.

"This decision also supports the responsibility to assist parents to exercise this basic right whether they choose to send their children to public, private, or religious school," Sister McPhee said.

Also commenting on the ruling was Mark Chopko, General Counsel of the USCCB, which filed an amicus brief in the case.

The Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program was found in violation of the First Amendment in a ruling last December by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati. In separate petitions this May, lawyers for the State of Ohio and the 4,000 children participating in the voucher program asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the decision. The Cleveland program allows students to receive annual tuition grants of up to $2,250.

"This decision is no way threatens the viability of the public school system or its ability to provide a quality education to the millions of parents, including many Catholic parents, who choose to send their children to public schools," Sister McPhee said. "In fact, I believe this decision will help to provide the impetus for obtaining a quality education for all school age children in our nation."

This is the statement by Sister Glenn Anne McPhee:

As the Secretary for Education of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, representing the largest private religious school community in our nation, I am delighted that the United States Supreme Court has ruled that the Cleveland voucher program is constitutional.

The Court"s decision is a significant victory for parents"especially low-income parents" and re-enforces the basic right of all parents to choose the school they believe best serves the educational needs of their children. This decision also supports the responsibility of the government to assist parents to exercise this basic right whether they choose to send their children to a public, private, or religious school.

This decision in no way threatens the viability of the public school system or its ability to provide a quality education to the millions of parents, including many Catholic parents, who choose to send their children to public schools; in fact, I believe that this decision will help to provide the impetus for obtaining a quality education for all school age children in our nation.

Now that this constitutional question has been resolved, I encourage members of Congress and state legislators to join Ohio and other states in offering scholarship or tax credit programs that will assist all parents to fulfill their basic rights and responsibility to obtain a quality education for their children in whatever school they choose.

The General Counsel of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Mark Chopko, made the following comment:

The decision today by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of the Cleveland scholarship program is good news for the parents of school children in Cleveland, good news to parents everywhere struggling to find educational alternatives, and good news for realism in constitutional interpretation.

The Court confirms the principle we believed long evident in its precedents, that voucher and scholarship programs can be constitutional under the First Amendment if they are carefully designed.

The Court affirms that programs that are designed to confer on a broad class of parents, a choice about where to spend an educational benefit for their children, are within that constitutional envelope. Those programs also must not select their beneficiaries by religious criteria or create incentives for parents to make choices of religious schools. Those rules provide workable guidance for legislators, educators, parents, and courts.

The Court also refused to rely on biases about the nature of Catholic and other religious schools, and the motives of parents. Instead it correctly relied on the record developed in the case, something we had urged the Court to do in our amicus brief. The Court noted in its decision that parents in Cleveland could choose from a variety of schools, and the range of available choice in the design of the program is important.

Perhaps most important for the administration of justice in the future, the Court relied on evidence about the design of the program, rather than statistics about the choices actually made. This means that, when legislators enact a program for valid reasons that give parents constitutionally permissible choices, legislators can more confidently act without worrying that some court will second guess that judgment when people actually begin to make choices.

That is good news indeed.