Tuesday, June 28, 2022 | 9:29 p.m.
The Nevada Supreme Court on Tuesday tossed an attempted initiative to create a publicly funded private school voucher system.
Echoing rulings handed down by a district court judge in April, the state Supreme Court said the attempted constitutional initiative by the Education Freedom political action committee would have amounted to unfunded mandates forced on the state by way of an inadequate petition. The ruling kills Education Freedom PAC’s petition drive.
“Because (Education Freedom’s) initiative does not include funding provisions, it is an unfunded mandate and is void,” Justice James Hardesty, writing for a 5-2 majority, said in an opinion released today. “Further, (Education Freedom’s) description of effect rendered the initiative void because it was misleading about the impact the proposed change would have on the state’s budget. Lastly, the initiative would impair the Legislature's inherent deliberative function because it directs the Legislature to enact statutes to effect its goal rather than proposing those laws itself.”
Education Freedom proposed an amendment to the Nevada constitution that would have required the state to establish and maintain a private school voucher program, which would have given parents the equivalent of the state’s annual per-pupil funding given to public schools. Parents would have been able to use the money on their children’s private-school tuition.
According to the ruling, Education Freedom cited a figure of $7,074 per pupil for 2022-23, when it is actually $10,290.
Justices Douglas Herndon and Kristina Pickering agreed with the majority on procedural grounds but dissented on the case’s merits, saying that the majority finding “creates a slippery slope approach of evaluating initiatives preelection because it puts the court in a position of determining what level of specificity is appropriate for an initiative to make it on the ballot. That is not this court’s role, nor should it be.”
Beverly Rogers, whose pro-public schools Rogers Foundation sued Education Freedom over the proposal, praised the ruling as “a huge win for students and Nevada families” by avoiding “one of the most extreme voucher measures in the country.”
“These groups will never stop and neither can we,” she said in a statement. “There is a clear effort to destroy our public schools, the only system dedicated to serving all students. We cannot let them. We will not let them. And we will continue to fight on behalf of Nevada’s students and their families.”
