By Trent Franks
The Scholarship Tax Credit model legislation allows individual taxpayers to claim a dollar-for-dollar tax credit when they make voluntary contributions to certain 501(C)(3) scholarship charities that expend at least 90 percent of their total revenues to provide scholarships to children to attend a school of their parent’s choice.
The most unique and vital component of Scholarship Tax Credit legislation is it strongly insulates religious schools from government intrusion because, unlike vouchers, it uses no public funding. Vouchers are funded by appropriated public monies from government coffers. “WITH SHEKELS COME SHACKLES.”
Under this protocol, a person takes his or her own private money “from his or her own wallet” and gives it to a scholarship charity. Any claim that this money just taken from a private individual’s own pocket is suddenly public money (before they have ever even filled out a tax return) would ultimately mean every dollar in every citizen’s private pocket in America has suddenly become public money. It is preposterous on its face.
Rather, these are private charitable donations from private individuals to help other private individuals gain private scholarships to private schools of their private choice. That privately drives the NEA out of their minds.
The first tax-credit scholarship legislation was passed in Arizona in 1997. Since then, some form of the Scholarship Tax Credit is in force in almost 20 states. It is the largest school-choice program in the nation, already raising approximately 6 BILLION private dollars and providing over one-half million scholarships to children in America.
In the June 30, 2020 Espinoza Supreme Court decision and recent similar cases, the U.S. Supreme Court unequivocally ruled religious schools cannot be discriminated against by arbitrarily excluding them from state programs that offer aid or incentives for parents paying for private education. This is an incredibly significant clarification that protects both religious freedom and parents’ rights in the education of their children.
Now that Espinoza has neutralized the anti-religious Blaine amendments preventing the use of public funds for schooling, as they relate to this legislation, Scholarship Tax Credits of this type could help millions of American children obtain scholarships to schools of their parent’s choice in coming decades.
The NEA, the ACLU, and the Marxist Left clearly realize they can no longer legally discriminate against religious schools or deprive parents of their religious freedom in choosing religious schools for their children. Those days are over. Their only remaining hope or strategy to use the coercive power of government to crush voluntary religious education in America is to make sure that the monies or incentives used to empower parents to choose religious schools come from government coffers instead of private hands.
The Left would be delighted if we afforded them this leverage to do the same thing to religious schools they have done to government and public schools for more than a century. This is their current strategy. We must not let them succeed.
It is now vital for legislators and policymakers to protect the religious liberty and integrity of religious schools by utilizing the original Arizona model language upheld in Espinoza as closely as possible.
Ironically, the Scholarship Tax Credit model is easier to pass legislatively than the different voucher models; Iit ultimately costs the donor nothing while saving the state money because of the disparity in the average cost of expensive public education versus private education.
With the passage of some form of this model in other areas of the nation, and as it has been upheld so many different times on so many different judicial levels, it is virtually impossible for any court challenge in any state to ultimately succeed.
Once again, and most importantly, out of all the school choice/parental empowerment mechanisms, the Scholarship Tax Credit model has the strongest ability to promote religious freedom and help protect religious schools from government intrusion, because it does not utilize appropriated public funds. This safeguard was the primary consideration when it was being written, making it the most vital distinction among all of the school choice/parental empowerment legislative models.
Trent Franks represented Arizona’s 8th Congressional District in Congress and served in the Arizona House of Representatives. He was the author and leading proponent of the original tax-credit scholarship bill in Arizona.