Colorado Luis:

Vouchers Dead (Again) (For Now)

The crusade to bring taxpayer funded school vouchers to Colorado suffered yet another defeat yesterday when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 (scroll down to Bill Owens v. Kimble Breazell and click on the link) that the latest voucher program violates the state constitution's requirement that school boards be under local control.

Legally, this is huge. The ruling has nothing to do with church and state issues that can always be revisited by the US Supreme Court. It doesn't even have to do with the so-called Blaine Amendment, Colorado's version of a wave of state constitutional amendments that were passed in a fit of anti-Catholic frenzy decades ago and which stand on shaky ground under the federal Constitution. A big win.

What it really means is that the state can't enact a program that will force recalcitrant school districts (read: Denver) to enact voucher programs without amending the state constitution. (The bill's sponsor, Nancy Spence, says she'll give it a try, but good luck.) That means that the ridiculously well funded supporters of vouchers will be back for a third try at passing a state constitutional amendment. They failed the first two times, but they will tell themselves that the same increase in Latino voter participation that Democrats are hoping will help Kerry and Salazar this year can be turned to their advantage. Not to mention the state Supreme Court majority bent over backwards to say how laudable the state legislature's goals in enacting the program are. And, under the logic of ballot initiatives, they might as well go for something really draconian instead of the experimental approach the law that got struck down would have taken.