Governor won Round 1
It will be interesting to see what comes of the lawsuit filed Thursday challenging the constitutionality of Tennessee’s Education Freedom Act, now in its first year.
The lawsuit says the legislation violates the state constitution because it provides state funds to private schools that “openly discriminate” against students. It also says the private schools don’t have to meet the same academic standards and accountability measure as public schools, which is one of the problems we had with the program enacted last winter.
We’re not sure how successful they’ll be proving public schools are damaged by the program, though, since the legislation was written to hold the public schools harmless. Since parents choose to apply for the scholarships, we also don’t know how successful they’ll be in proving the private schools discriminate. After all, parents can choose to keep their children in public schools or choose a different private school than one they allege discriminates.
Gov. Bill Lee’s initial 2019 tuition scholarship program (Education Savings Account) was blocked by two lawsuits from kicking off in 2020. But a 2022 state Supreme Court order lifted a previous order that had blocked it, and a lower court later gave it the go-ahead. One of the complaints in the lawsuit then was that it was unconstitutional.