EdChoice voucher program deemed unconstitutional
- Published: July 25, 2025
Late last month, Judge Jaiza Page of the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas handed down a summary judgement ruling Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program as unconstitutional.
As the News reported early this year, YS Schools is one of 306 Ohio school districts — half of the state’s 611 districts — to sign onto a complaint led by coalition Vouchers Hurt Ohio; the complaint, originally filed against the State of Ohio in January of 2022, challenges the constitutionality of funding private charter schools through public tax dollars.
In her summary judgment, Page noted the long history of public school funding in Ohio; the Constitutional Convention of 1850, Page points out, rejected an amendment that would have allowed public funds to be directed toward religious schools. The judgment also notes that Article VI, Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution mandates that the state provide for a “thorough and efficient system of common schools” through taxation and prohibits a religious sect from control over public school funding.
This long-standing constitutional understanding forms part of Vouchers Hurt Ohio’s argument against the use of tax dollars to fund private charter schools, a large number of which are religion-based; the group and co-plaintiffs also argued that the universal expansion of the availability of EdChoice vouchers has created a second, “uncommon” system of schools.
Judge Page agreed with Vouchers Hurt Ohio’s arguments, ruling against the state’s assertion that EdChoice has established a scholarship program and not a second system of schools, calling the distinction “mere semantics.”
“Where EdChoice participating private schools are inexplicably receiving double the per-pupil state funding than public schools, it is difficult to say that EdChoice is simply a scholarship,” Page wrote in the judgment, adding that evidence from the plaintiffs shows “beyond a reasonable doubt that EdChoice violates Article VI Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution.”
The judgment also notes the 1997 Ohio Supreme Court decision that declared the state’s funding model for public schools unconstitutional due to its overreliance on local property taxes, creating inequity between school districts. That ruling made way for the Cupp-Paterson Fair Schools Funding Plan, which is intended, in part, to direct more state funding to districts with less capacity for local property tax revenue.
As the News has reported in the past, the state has yet to fully fund the Fair Schools Funding Plan. Judge Page ruled that because “the General Assembly chose to expand their system of private school funding by about the same amount as Ohio’s public schools lost through … failure to fully fund the [Fair Schools Funding Plan],” the EdChoice program violates the Ohio Constitution.
Judge Page did not agree with the plaintiff’s arguments that the EdChoice program facilitates or supports discrimination, citing a lack of evidence of discriminatory conduct.
Expecting that the summary judgment will be appealed to a higher court, and likely the Ohio Supreme Court, Judge Page’s ruling was stayed, allowing the EdChoice program to continue for now.
The News was unable to reach a representative of Vouchers Hurt Ohio for comment this week, but in January, William L. Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, the organization behind Vouchers Hurt Ohio, said the group is likely in for a “multiyear process.”
The News will continue to follow the case as it heads to higher courts.
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