New lawsuit challenges restrictions on school choice in Vermont’s education reform law

Two parents from Georgia, Vermont, have filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s education reform law, claiming it arbitrarily violates their children’s access to private school and limits their educational opportunity.

The lawsuit, filed on Friday in Washington County Superior Court, centers on Vermont’s publicly funded tuition system, which allows families in districts without a public school for certain grades to use public dollars to send their children to other public schools or private schools (called independent schools in state law).

Act 73, the landmark education reform bill signed into law by Gov. Phil Scott last year, imposed new restrictions on Vermont’s school choice system — prohibiting public dollars from being used at all but 18 private schools.

Vermont parents Kollene Caspers and Michele Orosz, of Georgia, claim in the lawsuit that Act 73’s “drastic and unprecedented new restrictions” deprive their children of an equal educational opportunity under the law, and limits their ability to access “robust services and programs.”

Act 73 sets in motion major changes to how the state funds and governs its public schools. Lawmakers are working to consolidate school districts and implement a new statewide education finance system to achieve more equity across Vermont’s public school system.

The law mandated that, to be eligible for public tuition dollars, private schools must be located in a school district or supervisory union that does not operate a public school for some or all grades, and must have had at least 25% of their student body from the 2023-24 school year funded by a Vermont public school district.

Both parents have children attending Rice Memorial High School, a private Catholic school in South Burlington. Those students will still be eligible to receive public tuition to attend those schools through graduation. But because the school no longer meets eligibility requirements, their younger siblings not currently enrolled will be unable to use public dollars to attend.

Orosz, in a press release, said there was “no rhyme or reason to which schools and which kids get to stay eligible for town tuitioning and which ones the Legislature blocked.”

The lawsuit names Vermont’s Education Secretary Zoie Saunders as a defendant. The Agency of Education did not respond to a request for comment. Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, who defends the Agency of Education in legal action, did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit was filed in Washington County Superior Court by attorney Deborah Bucknam and attorneys with the Chicago-based Liberty Justice Center.

Jeffrey Schwab, the Liberty Justice Center’s director of litigation, said in a release that Act 73 “limits the ability of Vermont families to meet their educational need and rescinds a tradition that goes back two centuries.”

It’s the second such lawsuit targeting Act 73’s provisions around private school tuition.

In the fall, the Mid Vermont Christian School in Quechee, with support from the Alliance Defending Freedom, challenged Act 73 in federal court, alleging the law discriminated against religious schools by eliminating their access to public tuition dollars.

The new eligibility requirements halted the flow of public dollars toward religious schools, which had increased following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in the Carson v. Makin case.

Last week’s lawsuit is not the first brought by Bucknam and the Liberty Justice Center.

In 2020, Bucknam and attorneys with the Liberty Justice Center sued a number of school districts and pushed for a statewide school choice program, which would give all students across Vermont access to state money for public or private schools of their choosing, according to previous reporting. The Vermont Supreme Court eventually dismissed the case.

The right-leaning Liberty Justice Center has also filed cases across the country challenging vaccine mandates, supporting rules requiring parental notification if a child uses different pronouns at school and seeking to block the expansion of vote-by-mail, among others.

This story was originally published by VTDigger and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.