Earlier this week at Blog from the Capital, I posted news that the Utah legislature passed a bill creating a state-wide school voucher program. Now, Governor Jon Huntsman has signed it into law. It will make available to every student not already attending private school between $500 and $3000 (depending on family income) of public money to attend the private school of their choice, including religious schools, this despite the director of the State Office of Education stating "We have always believed it's unconstitutional."

Advocates for school vouchers (an agenda that - like the never-dying villain in so many Hollywood slasher films - persists despite having been defeated in numerous ballot initiatives and state legislatures) see this as a first step toward implementing state-wide funding of religious schools across the nation (see Andrew Coulson's new piece in the American Spectator). Proponents will put incredible pressure on legislators to achieve their goal. In her important essay on vouchers last year, Barbara Miner said it this way:

Vouchers do not survive on their merits, that much is clear. They survive for one simple reason: Too many corporate and conservative voucher supporters have invested too much money, self-interest, and ideological pride in the issue.

Most important, the stakes are too high. As educational writer Ann Bastian wrote more than 10 years ago in Rethinking Schools, "Privatizing public education is the centerpiece, the grand prize, of the right wing's overall agenda to dismantle social entitlements and government responsibility for social needs."

The principles of church-state separation still offer important avenues of challenge to voucher programs. The Supreme Court's unfortunate 2002 decision in Zelman may allow a program like Utah's under the US Constitution. But this new development may offer a valuable proving ground for the important counter-argument that state constitutions invalidate programs like this one on church-state grounds. As the Salt Lake Tribune says: "Utah's constitution contains blunt language prohibiting the government from directing public funds to religious organizations." Many states have similar provisions that go further than the US Constitution in explicitly prohibiting funding.

When Florida's voucher program was undone last year by its Supreme Court, the reasoning was based on the state's requirement that public school systems be "uniform," and did not come to the argument that such funding was unconstitutional on church-state grounds. But Utah has no such "uniformity" clause. The church-state argument will be just one of the consitutional challenges that are sure to come, but an important one in the fight to keep religious institutions free of taxpayer money, and keep the state from promoting the church.

Meanwhile, President Bush continues to offer a national school voucher program in each budget he sends to Congress, including his most recent.