Renee McGuinness, Vermont Family Alliance Policy Analyst
New eligibility requirements for the state’s town tuitioning program under Act 73, which went into effect on July 1, blocks all religious schools from receiving public funds.
Mid Vermont Christian school (MVCS) and families affected by the requirements are challenging the new law.
Alliance Defending Freedom filed an amendment to its ongoing case, Mid Vermont Christian School v. Saunders, to include a complaint against Vermont’s newly minted Act 73 Education Reform law.
Seven Days covered the story on October 31, which includes a copy of the filing.
The amendment asserts, on behalf of MVCS and additional plaintiffs, that Act 73, “seeks to weed-out and exclude religious schools from receiving public benefits.”
Under Act 73, independent schools are only eligible to receive public funds if the district in which the independent school is located does not operate a public school for some grades and at least 25% of the independent school’s students received public funds for the 2023 – 2024 school year, according to the criteria listed on the Vermont Agency of Education website. As a result, all religious schools are no longer eligible to receive public funds, along with nine non-religious independent schools that appear to be necessary collateral damage.
At least two State House committee discussions indicate some legislators were motivated to find a way to exclude religious schools from receiving public funds under the state’s town tuitioning law.
First, during a lengthy discussion in the Senate Education Committee in January on the inner workings of independent schools and the benefits of the state’s town tuitioning program, Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale prompted the Heads of Burr & Burton Academy and Long Trail School to form a “cohort” of schools to bully religious schools for “messing up” tuition for secular independent schools. Hinsdale was referring to MVCS’ alleged violations of Vermont’s anti-discrimination laws for upholding its religious beliefs about sex and gender: specifically, the MVCS girls’ basketball team forfeited a game to Long Trail School, whose team included a biological male, in November 2023. MVCS was subsequently banned from both receiving state tuition funds, and interscholastic sports and activities by the Vermont Principal’s Association, against which MVCS filed its original lawsuit.
Second, legislators gnashed their teeth over Christian schools receiving public tuition funds during discussion in the House Committee on Judiciary on Proposition 4 “Equal Rights Amendment” (2024). Committee members expressed concern that Vermont may be compelled – if legally challenged – to provide public funding to Christian schools, and that mandating that a Muslim be allowed to attend a Christian school would be “a battle for down the road,” according to Chair LaLonde.
In her commentary in Vermont Digger, Senator Martine Larocque-Gulick foresaw a lawsuit against Act 73 that could lead to universal choice and the privatization of education. We are seeing the beginning of her prophecy unfold, yet it will take years to fulfill: MVCS recently celebrated a victory when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit awarded the school a preliminary injunction ending the school’s ban from interscholastic sports as Mid Vermont Christian School v. Saunders proceeds – nearly two years after the ban.
It’s possible the State’s Attorney General and the Vermont court system will seek to sustain the state’s inequitable and discriminatory application of the town tuitioning law under Act 73, dragging their feet down the judicial path that will ultimately lead to defeat of Act 73 and the adoption of universal school choice.