Zatch
04-04-2011, 09:52 PM
Supreme School Choice
A narrow decision averts a legal assault on private schools.
The Supreme Court's big school choice decision yesterday is notable mainly for its insight into the progressive mind. To wit, no fewer than four Justices seem to believe that all wealth belongs to the government, and then government allows citizens to keep some of it by declining to tax it.
At issue in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn was a state tax credit for donations to organizations that offer scholarships for private schools, including (but not exclusively) religious schools. A group of taxpayers sued, claiming that religion was being subsidized on their dime, in violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause.
The district court tossed out this novel church-state theory, only to have it revived by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Yesterday's 5-4 decision was another well-deserved rebuke to the nation's leading judicial activists who dominate that appellate court.
In part, the litigants were attempting an end-run around the High Court's landmark 2002 school choice ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, which upheld a Cleveland voucher program even though some of the money went to Catholic schools. The Court reasoned that parents decide how to use the vouchers, so the program didn't amount to the government somehow "establishing" a religion.
Taxpayers rarely have the standing to sue over the government's spending choices, but this suit was hung on the slender 1968 Warren Court precedent of Flast v. Cohen, which created a narrow exception in establishment law cases. If one Justice had flipped, it would have created a broad new avenue of legal attack against school choice, as well as for lawsuits against everything from Medicare payments to Catholic hospitals to student loans for Jewish colleges.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that the litigants don't have standing because they weren't harmed, and also that they don't have standing under Flast because tax credits and spending programs are different.
"A dissenter whose tax dollars are extracted and spent knows that he has in some small measure been made to contribute to an establishment in violation of conscience." But a tax credit "is not tantamount to a religious tax or tithe." To think otherwise, Justice Kennedy continues, "assumes that income should be treated as if it were government property even if it has not come into the tax collector's hands."
And what do you know, four Justices assume precisely that. Both of President Obama's nominees joined the four dissenters, and newcomer Elena Kagan delivered a fiery 24-page apologia for that position, claiming that "the distinction" between appropriations and tax credits "is one in search of a difference." There's a good debate to be had about tax credits (see below), but one question for Justice Kagan: Is the government also establishing religion by not imposing a 100% tax rate on churches, mosques and synagogues?
With one more vote, the current Court's liberal minority would surely ban school choice involving any religious schools. The Arizona decision shows again that the Court is only a single vote away from many decisions not all that far removed from those of the Ninth Circuit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576242942552010676.html?m od=googlenews_wsj
VICTORY! Supreme Court Upholds Education Tax Credits | Cato@Liberty
Posted By Andrew J. Coulson
Ruling in ACSTO v. Winn today, the United States Supreme upheld Arizona's k-12 scholarship tax credit program. Under this program, individuals receive a tax cut if they donate to a non-profit scholarship fund that gives out private school tuition aid.
Today's decision, a reversal of an earlier ruling by the 9th Circuit [1], found that the respondents had no right to sue to stop the AZ program because they have not been harmed by it. And the reason they have not been harmed is central to why, for nearly 20 years, I have favored education tax credit programs over both traditional public schooling and voucher programs.
Respondents alleged that cutting a person's taxes is equivalent to spending government money -- and since taxpayers are receiving credits for donations to religious organizations, that was ostensibly equivalent to the government giving to those organizations. The Court answered, quite simply: "That is incorrect." Elaborating, the Court ruled that:
tax credits and governmental expenditures do not both implicate individual taxpayers in sectarian activities. A dissenter whose tax dollars are “extracted and spent” knows that he has in some small measure been made to contribute to an establishment in violation of conscience.... [By contrast,] awarding some citizens a tax credit allows other citizens to retain control over their own funds in accordance with their own consciences. [emphasis added]
That is precisely the argument I have been making for a very long time (last Friday, at a conference in Berkeley; last year in a blog post, here [2]; a dozen years ago, in my book Market Education: The Unknown History [3]).
With this ruling, the way forward for the school choice movement is clearer than it has ever been. Education tax credits -- both the scholarship form operating in Arizona and the direct form operating in Illinois and Iowa -- allow for universal access to the education marketplace without forcing any citizen to subsidize instruction that violates their convictions. No other school choice system offers that advantage and it is an advantage that is central to the values of our nation. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Virginia Act Establishing Religious Freedom:
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves... is sinful and tyrannical
Public schooling has long been a source of social conflict [4] because it engenders just such compulsion. Education tax credits offer a way of securing universal public education without this blight. It is time to adopt them more widely.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/victory-supreme-court-upholds-education-tax-credits/
A narrow decision averts a legal assault on private schools.
The Supreme Court's big school choice decision yesterday is notable mainly for its insight into the progressive mind. To wit, no fewer than four Justices seem to believe that all wealth belongs to the government, and then government allows citizens to keep some of it by declining to tax it.
At issue in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn was a state tax credit for donations to organizations that offer scholarships for private schools, including (but not exclusively) religious schools. A group of taxpayers sued, claiming that religion was being subsidized on their dime, in violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause.
The district court tossed out this novel church-state theory, only to have it revived by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Yesterday's 5-4 decision was another well-deserved rebuke to the nation's leading judicial activists who dominate that appellate court.
In part, the litigants were attempting an end-run around the High Court's landmark 2002 school choice ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, which upheld a Cleveland voucher program even though some of the money went to Catholic schools. The Court reasoned that parents decide how to use the vouchers, so the program didn't amount to the government somehow "establishing" a religion.
Taxpayers rarely have the standing to sue over the government's spending choices, but this suit was hung on the slender 1968 Warren Court precedent of Flast v. Cohen, which created a narrow exception in establishment law cases. If one Justice had flipped, it would have created a broad new avenue of legal attack against school choice, as well as for lawsuits against everything from Medicare payments to Catholic hospitals to student loans for Jewish colleges.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that the litigants don't have standing because they weren't harmed, and also that they don't have standing under Flast because tax credits and spending programs are different.
"A dissenter whose tax dollars are extracted and spent knows that he has in some small measure been made to contribute to an establishment in violation of conscience." But a tax credit "is not tantamount to a religious tax or tithe." To think otherwise, Justice Kennedy continues, "assumes that income should be treated as if it were government property even if it has not come into the tax collector's hands."
And what do you know, four Justices assume precisely that. Both of President Obama's nominees joined the four dissenters, and newcomer Elena Kagan delivered a fiery 24-page apologia for that position, claiming that "the distinction" between appropriations and tax credits "is one in search of a difference." There's a good debate to be had about tax credits (see below), but one question for Justice Kagan: Is the government also establishing religion by not imposing a 100% tax rate on churches, mosques and synagogues?
With one more vote, the current Court's liberal minority would surely ban school choice involving any religious schools. The Arizona decision shows again that the Court is only a single vote away from many decisions not all that far removed from those of the Ninth Circuit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576242942552010676.html?m od=googlenews_wsj
VICTORY! Supreme Court Upholds Education Tax Credits | Cato@Liberty
Posted By Andrew J. Coulson
Ruling in ACSTO v. Winn today, the United States Supreme upheld Arizona's k-12 scholarship tax credit program. Under this program, individuals receive a tax cut if they donate to a non-profit scholarship fund that gives out private school tuition aid.
Today's decision, a reversal of an earlier ruling by the 9th Circuit [1], found that the respondents had no right to sue to stop the AZ program because they have not been harmed by it. And the reason they have not been harmed is central to why, for nearly 20 years, I have favored education tax credit programs over both traditional public schooling and voucher programs.
Respondents alleged that cutting a person's taxes is equivalent to spending government money -- and since taxpayers are receiving credits for donations to religious organizations, that was ostensibly equivalent to the government giving to those organizations. The Court answered, quite simply: "That is incorrect." Elaborating, the Court ruled that:
tax credits and governmental expenditures do not both implicate individual taxpayers in sectarian activities. A dissenter whose tax dollars are “extracted and spent” knows that he has in some small measure been made to contribute to an establishment in violation of conscience.... [By contrast,] awarding some citizens a tax credit allows other citizens to retain control over their own funds in accordance with their own consciences. [emphasis added]
That is precisely the argument I have been making for a very long time (last Friday, at a conference in Berkeley; last year in a blog post, here [2]; a dozen years ago, in my book Market Education: The Unknown History [3]).
With this ruling, the way forward for the school choice movement is clearer than it has ever been. Education tax credits -- both the scholarship form operating in Arizona and the direct form operating in Illinois and Iowa -- allow for universal access to the education marketplace without forcing any citizen to subsidize instruction that violates their convictions. No other school choice system offers that advantage and it is an advantage that is central to the values of our nation. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Virginia Act Establishing Religious Freedom:
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves... is sinful and tyrannical
Public schooling has long been a source of social conflict [4] because it engenders just such compulsion. Education tax credits offer a way of securing universal public education without this blight. It is time to adopt them more widely.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/victory-supreme-court-upholds-education-tax-credits/