WASHINGTON'The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will decide this term whether taxpayer money can be used to pay for children to attend religious schools. The vouchers case offers an early legal test of President Bush's faith-based initiative.
The president wants public funds to flow to religious charities. But in the past, the Supreme Court has said the Constitution forbids direct public funding of religious institutions.
The outcome of the case also may shape the future of school reform.
Proponents of vouchers say that they offer hope to children who are trapped in the nation's worst public schools. These funds give parents a real choice, they say, and allow them to transfer their children to nearby private and parochial schools.
In 1995, the Ohio Legislature began offering scholarships, or vouchers, for children from low-income families in Cleveland. Each child is eligible to receive up to $2,500 to pay for private or parochial school.
As many as 4,000 students have taken advantage of the offer, and 96 percent of them transferred from public to religious schools.
Opponents of vouchers'including the nation's teachers unions'say that such programs drain money from the public system and thereby weaken the schools that educate the vast majority of children. They fear that if limited use of vouchers is upheld, Ohio lawmakers will expand the tuition subsidies statewide.
But the Supreme Court will not decide whether vouchers are a good idea or a bad one. Rather, the justices will rule on whether this diversion of public money to parochial schools violates the First Amendment's ban on laws 'respecting an establishment of religion.'
In the 1960s and '70s, the court insisted that the First Amendment called for a strict separation of church and state.
