The Freedom From Religion Foundation welcomes the recent South Carolina Supreme Court ruling striking down an unconstitutional state voucher scheme.
On Wednesday, the court ruled 3-2 that portions of the Education Scholarship Trust Fund Act allowing public funds to be used to benefit private schools violate the South Carolina Constitution. This was the second time in four years that the court has struck down a plan by South Carolina lawmakers to bypass the state Constitution’s ban on direct public support for private schools. Additionally, last year FFRF won its lawsuit challenging a legislative earmark in the 2022–23 budget of $1.5 million for a Christian educational facility, after the religious organization withdrew its request.
The Education Scholarship Trust Fund program was signed into law in May 2023 by Gov. Henry McMaster, permitting parents in South Carolina to apply for scholarships worth $6,000 per student to pay tuition to qualifying educational providers, including private and online schools. In October 2023, the South Carolina NAACP, the South Carolina State Education Association and six public school parents asked the court to strike down the law to use public money for private school education.
Justice D. Garrison Hill got right to the point in his majority opinion: “Once we apply the plain and popular meaning of ‘direct benefit’ to the act, the presumption of constitutionality withers.” This was the obvious outcome because Article XI, Section 4 of the South Carolina Constitution couldn’t be more clear: “No money shall be paid from public funds nor shall the credit of the state or any of its political subdivisions be used for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”
As laws implementing vouchers for religious schools are being quietly expanded all over the country, this ruling bolsters FFRF’s ongoing efforts to protect public education.
Under the phony guise of “school choice,” voucher schemes and similar measures transfer taxpayer funds directly to private religious schools, simultaneously defunding public education and forcing taxpayers to subsidize religious indoctrination. About 90 percent of private schools are religiously affiliated. Vouchers and tuition tax credits almost entirely benefit religious schools with overtly religious missions, which integrate religion into every subject. Voucher schemes have become a means of circumventing the constitutional requirement of separation between state and church that prohibits the government from funding or favoring religion..
Vouchers, as FFRF has long warned, are an exploitation of public funds by private, mostly religious schools that are draining the coffers of public schools. A recent ProPublica article demonstrates that religious schools are exploiting these programs to pad their coffers at taxpayer expense. Some voucher schools, such as St. Brendan the Navigator in Hilliard, Ohio, are effectively threatening to withhold supplemental aid if the families do not seek public funds first. And the principal at Holy Family School in Poland, Ohio, admitted to forcing families to apply for public funds.
“Even the conservative South Carolina Supreme Court knows private school voucher schemes are wrong,” said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We celebrate this important victory for public schools, which are the bedrock of our democracy.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members across the country, including hundreds of members in South Carolina. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
