Vermont Family Sues State Education Officials on October 27, Alleging Town Tuition and Dual Enrollment Programs Exclude Religious Schools
A Vermont family on October 27 filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont against state education officials, alleging that the Town Tuition Program and the Dual Enrollment Program discriminate against religious schools. The plaintiffs are the Bishop family and their child, referred to in the complaint by the pseudonym A.B. A.B. is a senior at Mount St. Joseph Academy, a Catholic high school in Rutland; the family lives in North Chittenden and are nondenominational Christians. Their Barstow Unified Union School District operates no high school and pays tuition for students to attend school elsewhere.
Vermont's Dual Enrollment Program allows high school juniors and seniors to take college courses for free, but only private school students who receive town tuition support may participate. The complaint says state officials have effectively barred these public benefit programs from being used at religious schools, making the Bishop family "the victims of Vermont's latest round of religious discrimination," and asks the court for injunctive and declaratory relief so that A.B. can take part in both programs during her final school year.
The defendants include Agency of Education Secretary Zoe Sanders, State Board of Education Chair Tammy Kolbe and the Barstow Unified Union School District. The plaintiffs are represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal nonprofit that has won religious freedom cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 佛蒙特州拉特兰市市中心的法院与教堂建筑 / Courthouse and church buildings in downtown Rutland, Vermont. Photo: Magicpiano, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
