Lost in all the commotion over the U.S. Supreme Court’s several decisions today is another important decision with ramifications for school choice. The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Gaddy v. Georgia Department of Revenue that plaintiffs had no standing to challenge the state’s tax-credit scholarship program because the scholarship funds are private funds, not a government expenditure:
We also reject the assertion that plaintiffs have standing because these tax credits actually amount to unconstitutional expenditures of tax revenues or public funds. The statutes that govern the Program demonstrate that only private funds, and not public revenue, are used.
The program allows donors to receive tax credits in return for contributions to qualified nonprofit scholarship organizations that help families send their children to the schools of their choice. Plaintiffs asserted that the program violated Georgia’s Blaine Amendment, which prohibits the state from giving public funds to religious schools. However, as we explained in our amicus brief, no public funds are involved. “Taxpayers choose to donate voluntarily using their own private funds and receive a tax credit for the amount of the donation; no money ever enters or leaves the treasury.” Neither does the state direct where the funds are used. “The state exercises no control over which scholarship organizations donors choose to support, which students receive scholarships, or at which schools parents choose to use the scholarships.” The Georgia Supreme Court agreed:
Individuals and corporations chose the [scholarship organizations] to which they wish to direct contributions; these private [scholarship organizations] select the student recipients of the scholarships they award; and the students and their parents decide whether to use their scholarships at religious or other private schools. The State controls none of these decisions. Nor does it control the contributed funds or the educational entities that ultimately receive the funds.
“Today’s victory has secured Georgia parents’ right to continue choosing the best education for their children,” stated Erica Smith, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, which represented scholarship parents in the Gaddy case. “This Court correctly recognized that government should promote educational opportunity and choice, not limit it as the plaintiffs proposed.”
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