The Freedom From Religion Foundation is sorry to report that South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has signed into law a bill to restore a private school voucher scheme that the state Supreme Court had recently nixed.
In doing so, McMaster shows that South Carolina students are not his priority. South Carolina’s Constitution states plainly that public funds may not “be used for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.” This simple language ensures that private religious interests will not erode the state’s public schools and protects the religious liberty rights of all South Carolina taxpayers.
In 2023, the Freedom From Religion Foundation successfully challenged the governor’s attempt to give $1.5 million to a private religious educational institution. Thanks to South Carolina’s strong constitutional language, the religious group withdrew its funding request after pressure from FFRF’s lawsuit.
However, state lawmakers have repeatedly tried to circumvent this provision to pay for private school vouchers. Most recently, the Legislature passed a common neo-voucher scheme called “Education Scholarships,” arguing that clever accounting somehow allows them to fund private religious education. The state Supreme Court rebuked this with a strong decision last year.
Now, South Carolina legislators and Gov. McMaster are trying again. Their new idea is that the private school funding will come from the state’s lottery proceeds. This new scheme will certainly be challenged, and the state will waste more resources defending a scheme that the state’s top court will likely strike down anyway.
Across the country, vouchers have proven to be a failed experiment. They siphon money from already underfunded public schools, offer no measurable academic benefit, and primarily serve families who already send their children to private institutions — most of them religious. Nationally, more than three-quarters of voucher recipients attend religious schools; in some states, that figure is even higher. Rather than expanding opportunity, these programs exacerbate inequality, foster discrimination, and force taxpayers to subsidize religious indoctrination.
In recent years, state voucher programs have moved toward being “universal,” meaning they are available to even the wealthiest families. This removes any pretense that vouchers are supposed to benefit disadvantaged students and reveals “school choice” to be a misnomer, as private schools raise tuition and deny admission to disfavored students.
“South Carolina’s Supreme Court did the right thing last year,” comments FFRF co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Taxpayers should insist that their state representatives abide by the state Constitution rather than trying to get around it at the expense of public schools.”
FFRF urges South Carolina residents and lawmakers nationwide to reject voucher schemes in all forms. Public dollars should support public schools — secular institutions that serve all students and uphold the principle of church-state separation. This new law betrays that mission and will be met with strong resistance.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 42,000 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.
