Abstract
Educational vouchers provide a system whereby public funds are used to finance private education for students. With the United States Supreme Court decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, educational vouchers were found to be constitutional under the Establishment Clause to the United States Constitution. However, these vouchers also had to be found constitutional under the wording of individual state constitutions as, per the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, education is a power of the individual states. In 2006, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Holmes that the private school option of the Florida Opportunity Scholarship Program was unconstitutional as the program financed private school vouchers for students in chronically failing schools using money that had been specifically earmarked for public education. However, the John M. McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities Program, which provided private school vouchers for students in Florida classified as having a disability, had yet to be challenged in court. The purpose of this study was to answer the following question: Can the logic used in the decision of Bush v. Holmes in finding the Florida Opportunity Scholarship Program unconstitutional under the Florida State Constitution be applied to the McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities? To answer this question, this study analyzed United States Supreme Court cases, state supreme court cases, wording in state statutes, and legal research. In conducting the analysis, this study found that the Florida Opportunity Scholarship Program and the McKay Scholarship Program were comparable programs as worded in Florida State Statutes. As a result, the logic used in finding the Opportunity Scholarship Program was applied to the McKay Scholarship where it was shown that the private school option of the McKay Scholarship violated the Florida Constitution by financing a system of private schools which are not uniform in relation to the system of free, public schools outlined in the Florida Constitution. This study provided insight into the legal challenge that could emerge should the McKay Scholarship be challenged in court.