A coalition of public school advocates filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to block House Bill 93, Idaho’s first private school choice program.
The coalition — which includes the Idaho Education Association, the Moscow School District and two advocacy groups — held a news conference Wednesday at the Statehouse in Boise. Leaders for the group said they were filing the petition with the Idaho Supreme Court.
The petition will ask justices to declare HB 93’s tax credit unconstitutional and block the Idaho State Tax Commission from implementing it. The program violates the Idaho Constitution’s requirement that the state “establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public free common schools,” the coalition argues.
“These 14 words are simple, yet they’re profound, and HB 93 has no basis in them,” said Daniel Mooney, a Boise attorney and president of the Committee to Protect and Preserve the Idaho Constitution, one of the advocacy groups involved in the coalition.
The GOP-dominated Legislature approved HB 93 in February, and Republican Gov. Brad Little signed it into law — despite strong public opposition to the proposal. The bill created the state’s first private school program after years of debate, and Idaho joined dozens of other Republican-led states in unlocking taxpayer dollars for private and home schooling.
Recipients of the tax credit, which is scheduled to launch in January, are eligible for up to $5,000 — or $7,500 for students with special needs — covering private school tuition and other expenses for non-public education.
The lawsuit came as no surprise to HB 93 co-sponsor Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls.
“We’ve been anticipating this,” she told Idaho Education News Wednesday. “We are as confident as we ever have been in the constitutionality of this bill, both with the Idaho Constitution and the United States Constitution.”
Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Mormon Women for Ethical Government and several individuals, including former Republican state superintendent Jerry Evans and current Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen, R-Idaho Falls.
The coalition hired Hawley Troxell, a Boise-based law firm, to argue the case.
Paul Stark, executive director of the Idaho Education Association, said HB 93 undermines accountability, a “core Idaho value.” HB 93 didn’t require that private schools comply with standards required of public schools like testing, curriculum standards and open enrollment.
“Private schools get taxpayer dollars without disclosing their curriculum, test scores or even requiring background checks,” Stark said during the news conference. “They can reject students based on religion, disability or anything else. This is not just unaccountable, it’s unfair, it’s unsafe and it’s unconstitutional.”
Mooney declined to share many specifics about the coalition’s legal strategy Wednesday. But he said the constitutional arguments are similar to those presented in other states where challenges to private school subsidy programs were successful.
A district court judge in Salt Lake City, for instance, halted Utah’s education savings account program earlier this year. The state’s teachers’ union argued that the Utah Constitution bars state dollars from funding an education system that’s not free or open to all students.
“We trust that our court will reach such a result,” Mooney said.
If this argument is successful, Horman said, Idaho would also see the end of the Launch and Advanced Opportunities scholarships, both of which are open to private school students.
“If constitutionality is their main concern, we welcome that argument and welcome the opportunity to prove how this is constitutional,” she said.