CHEYENNE — A Laramie County District Court judge on Tuesday ordered an indefinite halt to the state’s new school voucher program, which would award $7,000 for each child to Wyoming families sending children to private schools or homeschool programs, regardless of family income.
The order comes as part of a lawsuit filed in June by the Wyoming Education Association, calling the program unconstitutional.
Judge Peter Froelicher’s order for a preliminary injunction indicates he finds the program would have caused irreparable harm to the defendants if the vouchers proceeded during the litigation process.
However, this preliminary injunction doesn’t mean the new voucher program will not happen. It is simply a pause of the program to maintain the status quo while judgment is passed to determine whether the program violates the Wyoming Constitution, he wrote.
At the end of June, Froelicher approved a temporary preliminary injunction to consider whether to grant the WEA’s full motion for a preliminary injunction. The move Tuesday means the status quo will be maintained until the court has fully litigated the case.
In WEA’s initial complaint, it offered three ways in which it would suffer irreparable harm.
First, it claimed the $30 million appropriated for the voucher program, called the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship Act and Education Savings Account Program (ESA), could be used to fund public education, which the same judge held to be unconstitutionally underfunded in Wyoming in February, including failing to properly fund teacher salaries.
At the time of the decision Tuesday, there were already 3,965 applications for the voucher, for a total of more than $27 million.
The second assertion from WEA is that public school funding would be reduced due to the loss of average daily membership at the school districts that lose students who opt into the program.
Finally, WEA contended that there would be irreparable injury if public funding is paid to certified education service providers, via the students’ vouchers, and must be recovered by the state if the act is later determined to be unconstitutional.
The defendants, which include Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder and three Wyoming parent intervener defendants, argued that WEA, and the nine parents who joined the case as plaintiffs, had not established any individual student, parental or teacher harm or injury.
In his order granting the preliminary injunction, Froelicher wrote that Degenfelder and the intervenors “ignore the well-established doctrine that the fundamental right to an education exists to benefit not just students, but all Wyoming citizens through education of their youth.”
According to the judge’s order, the voucher program allows public funding of private schools that have discriminatory admission policies. Two of the parents who joined the WEA as plaintiffs have a child who is nonbinary, and the child would not be permitted equal access to the program because the act permits public funding of private schools that have discriminatory admission policies.
“Appropriating $30 million for private schooling of Wyoming students is inconsistent with the undisputed doctrine that its paramount priority is to support ‘an opportunity for a complete, proper, quality education’ and any competing priorities that are not of constitutional magnitude are secondary,” Froelicher wrote.
In response to this order, Degenfelder issued a statement Tuesday evening saying she is already working with the state Attorney General’s office on options to challenge the injunction.
“I am disheartened at the court’s written order granting the WEA’s injunction. As one of nearly 4,000 Wyoming families, you have had your lives unnecessarily upended through no fault of your own. This constitutional dispute could have been handled in a different way to not cause such harm to you,” she wrote. “… We will continue to keep you apprised of the situation, and I will continue to fight for school choice in Wyoming.”
The Partnership for Educational Choice, a joint project of EdChoice and the Institute for Justice, said in a statement it will move to stay the injunction to allow parents to continue to use the voucher program while the lawsuit continues.
“The court’s decision to limit educational opportunity for Wyoming families is contrary to the Wyoming Constitution,” said Thomas M. Fisher, executive vice president and director of litigation at EdChoice Legal Advocates, EdChoice’s legal arm, in a statement. “We will seek to stay the injunction and appeal it as soon as possible.”
In Froelicher’s order, the defendants are allowed to continue to expend the $880,000 allocated for administrative expenses to carry out the ESA program.
The ESA program was passed by the Wyoming Legislature earlier this year. It is an expansion of an existing income-based voucher program that awards $6,000 per child to qualifying families. That program was passed by the state’s elected officials last year.