BREAKING: Ohio Court Finds Universal Vouchers Unconstitutional!

Judge Confirms the Brutal Facts of an Out-of-Control Scheme

It happened in South Carolina.

It happened in Utah.

It happened in Kentucky.

And now it happened in…Ohio. Yesterday!

After lengthy litigation and mountains of discovery—and never-ending ducking by the current Ohio Speaker who’s quarterbacked the mess for years—a Common Pleas Court (Judge Jaiza Page) ruled that universal private school vouchers violate the state’s clear constitutional mandates about how politicians can and can not spend education dollars.

More than almost any other issue out there, state constitutions speak very clearly about education funding (back in the day, state leaders in Ohio and elsewhere saw just how important public education was, and is)—which is why these court rulings (all in red states) have been so consistent of late.

Here’s a quick summary of yesterday’s historic decision:

Backdrop and the Ohio Constitution:

As a reminder, several years back, a number of Ohio school districts and other plaintiffs sued the state of Ohio for its voucher program (known as EdChoice), a program which expanded even further following the suit. Countless other public school districts across the state have signed on as supporters of the suit—truly a mighty coalition of urban, rural and suburban districts.

The plaintiffs alleged that the EdChoice program violated Ohio’s Constitution for five reasons, including that it violated the following clauses that appear in the Ohio Constitution:

• that the state of Ohio “will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools;” and

• “no religious sect or other sect or sects shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.”

The Facts:

Knowing just how problematic the Ohio Supreme Court is (which will ultimately hear the appeal from this ruling), one of the most important aspects of this case is the lengthy discovery that generated damning facts about what is happening in Ohio under this out-of-control voucher scheme. These facts are now laid bare for all of Ohio to see. They can’t be reversed or erased.

Here are some details from the case, which Judge Page cited in her ruling yesterday:

• Key Findings:

  • once a student is accepted to a participating non-public school, that student may apply for an EdChoice vouchers through the private school; it is the school, “not the student or parent, applies to the state for an EdChoice voucher.”

  • if the student qualifies, “the State pays the voucher amount directly” to the private school; “EdChoice funding is paid directly from the state” to the schools (unlike past programs, it does not go to the family)

  • the Ohio Department of Education “has no system in place to verify that the participating schools are following EdChoice’s regulations”

    • ODE does not conduct site visits of participating schools

  • public school funding and EdCHoice funding come from “the same line item within the State’s budget”

• The Private Schools Receiving Vouchers:

  • in FY 2022, more than $300M in public funds was sent to 575 non-public chartered schools

    • for 154 of those schools, EdChoice vouchers accounted for more than 75% of their enrolled students

    • some of those schools received 60% of their funding from the state

    • a “significant portion” of these schools are religious schools—they are not subject to anti-discrimination laws, and many reserve the right to reject applicants because of behavioral/academic problems, sexual preference, religious or moral beliefs, and/or disability.

  • Together, the application process and the lack of any non-discrimination restrictions gives “a private religious school” “the discretion and ability to apply for and receive subsidies directly from the government, while at the same time discriminating against applicants on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, or other criteria”

  • The Court points out that the recent expansion of EdChoice has only exacerbated the problem: $700 million paid directly to private schools (Note: the numbers only continue to explode in the current budget)

• The Plaintiff districts lay out in painful ways the countless adverse impacts of lack of state funding—including cuts, layoffs, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate facilities and buses (and inability to make needed repairs), recruiting challenges, dated and shortage of textbooks, deficits, health of schools (lack of air conditioning, insect and rodents), and higher local levies

• In perhaps the most damning factual showing of the case, plaintiff districts showed dramatically unequal treatment of their public students by the state of Ohio versus private students receiving Ohio’s EdChoice vouchers. For example:

  • Columbus City Schools receive only $2,800 per student (45,000 students) from the state, while the 7,500 voucher-funded private school students within its district are funded at more than $5,400 per student

  • Cleveland/University Heights: $1,700 for each public school student vs. $5,500 per private/voucher student in the same community

  • Richmond Heights: $1,529.09 (public student) vs. $6,750 per private/voucher student in the same community

  • The Court took note of this factual showing: “private schools participating in EdChoice receive substantially more state funding per student than public schools;” elsewhere, the court concluded that the private school funding was “inexplicably” double the rate of public school funding across the state

    • among much of the evidence presented, this disparity in public vs. private funding led the court to conclude that “it is difficult to say that EdChoice is simply a scholarship that follows and/or benefits the student as opposed to a system that benefits private schools”

• The Court points out that the amount by which the state is underfunding public education (via the Fair School Funding Plan)—$300 million—approximates the amount being sent to private schools via EdChoice in the same fiscal year

  • the statehouse “chose to expand their system of private school funding by about the same amount as Ohio’s public schools lost through the General Assembly’s failure to fully fund the FSFP”

  • as my friend Steve Dyer (who played a key role in this case) points out:

    • “The reason [this] matters is because of something Ohio’s school choice advocates have done for years — tried to make voucher and charter payments budget proof by burying them in the same line item as public school kids’ money”

    • “So for years, voucher and charter money was never cut because they’d just take the increased money for the choice programs out of the money originally budgeted for public school students. Which, in turn, forced districts to go to the ballot more often and for more money to mean their students’ needs — driving up all our property taxes.”

Legal conclusions:

Assessing this combination of facts, the Court found the EdChoice universal voucher system violates the Ohio Constitution on three grounds:

• First, in violation of the Ohio Constitution, “the General Assembly has created a system of uncommon private schools by directly providing private schools with over $700 million in funding.”

• Second, a system in which public school districts “struggle to educate their students with inadequate funding” while private schools received EdChoice funding along with “unknown amounts of public revenue…is not thorough and efficient.”

• The EdChoice program violated the Ohio Constitution by “giving a religion or other sect the exclusive right to, or control of, a part of the school funds of Ohio”

Next Steps

There will no doubt be an appeal to this case.

And given that the Ohio Supreme Court has found a way to interpret “boneless” to mean “with bones,” and a fatal concentration of nitrogen not to be “toxic,” sustaining this decision on appeal will be an uphill battle.

But because this decision so clearly lays out the damning facts about this system, it’s a crucial ruling for the public to understand. The facts could not be more clear about how this separate system of private school funding operates, and the unequal funding it is providing.

And of course, this ruling clarifies all this as journalists in Ohio and elsewhere continue to uncover data showing that the vast majority of the students benefitting from vouchers were already attending private schools, and most could already afford them. In fact, with the expansion to true universal vouchers (no more income limits), vouchers are being disproportionately used in the most well-off communities in Ohio.

Bigger picture, GOP legislators have once again been found to have violated the Ohio Constitution. As they did with gerrymandering not long ago, and school funding a generation ago.

And have no doubt, they will complain about this court and its decision (some already are). But when they do, remind them that this is the same result we have seen in recent years in states even more deep red than Ohio. As in those states, the Constitution is actually clear on what it requires of these politicians when it comes to public education. They should either follow the Constitution they take an oath to, or go through the process of amending it (which Kentucky politicians tried to do, only to be turned away by the voters).

Continuing to expand on their deeply flawed approach—as if the words of the Constitution don’t mean what they say—is just one more sign of how lawless this state has become.

Thank you to the public school champions who bravely took on this case—then made the case in court. For an interview with the man I call the Paul Revere of education in Ohio—William Phillis, the brainchild of this and the prior suit—go HERE.

He and the coalition he built provide yet another example of how we can NEVER stop fighting for democracy.

Day 214—June 24, 2025

Donald Trump’s pronouncement that Iran’s nuclear operation had been “completely obliterated” continues to look more flimsy by the day.

A CNN report found that the Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that “Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely ‘intact.’ Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.”

‘So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,’ this person added.”

Reflecting this confusion, the Administration cancelled a scheduled classified briefing in the House on the Iran strikes. Congressman Pat Ryan summed up why here: