As Andrew Coulson noted, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, the education tax credit case whose cert petition Cato supported with an amicus brief. So we didn’t get the summary reversal we optimistically hoped for but I’m confident that this means only that the Ninth Circuit’s reversal will have to wait 8–10 months. Congratulations to Tim Keller, Dick Komer, and our friends at the Institute for Justice, which successfully litigated the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case that is the pro-school choice precedent the Ninth Circuit so blithely ignored here.

I should note that ours was one of only three amicus briefs filed in this case, and studies have shown that the first few such briefs increase chances of Supreme Court review significantly (having more than about three seems to be redundant). Which isn’t to say that we take credit for the successful strategy that IJ and its co-counsel are pursuing — indeed, as is good appellate practice, we coordinated with IJ so our brief would offer the Court some arguments and nuance for which the parties’ briefs didn’t have space — but it is gratifying to see the Court impliedly see the validity of our position. We will of course be filing again at the merits stage, which briefs won’t be due for a few months. The Court will likely hear the case in late fall, so we should expect a final decision in winter 2011.

For all the filings in the case, see its SCOTUSwiki page or its Supreme Court docket page. I blogged about the case here and here and George Will wrote about it last week. Andrew also blogged the original Ninth Circuit decision here.