Editing School voucher (section)

====Legal challenges====
The school voucher question in the United States also received a considerable amount of judicial review in the early 2000s.

A program launched in the city of [[Cleveland, Ohio|Cleveland]] in 1995 and authorized by the state of [[Ohio]] was challenged in court on the grounds that it violated both the federal constitutional principle of separation of church and state and the guarantee of religious liberty in the [[Ohio Constitution]]. These claims were rejected by the [[Ohio Supreme Court]], but the federal claims were upheld by [[United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio|the local federal district court]] and by the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit|Sixth Circuit appeals court]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Legal Summary of U.S. Supreme Court decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 436 U.S. |url=http://edreform.com/school_choice/supreme_court_ruling.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060417233028/http://edreform.com/school_choice/supreme_court_ruling.htm |archive-date=April 17, 2006 |access-date=April 21, 2006 |df=mdy-all}}</ref> The fact that nearly all of the families using vouchers attended Catholic schools in the Cleveland area was cited in the decisions.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Friden |first=Terry |date=July 27, 2002 |title=Supreme Court affirms school voucher program |work=CNN |url=http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/27/scotus.school.vouchers/ |url-status=dead |access-date=April 21, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060427160627/http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/27/scotus.school.vouchers/ |archive-date=April 27, 2006}}</ref>

This was later reversed in 2002 in a landmark case before the [[Supreme Court of the United States|US Supreme Court]], ''[[Zelman v. Simmons-Harris]]'', in which the divided court, in a 5–4 decision, ruled the Ohio school voucher plan constitutional and removed any constitutional barriers to similar voucher plans in the future, with conservative justices [[Anthony Kennedy]], [[Sandra Day O'Connor]], [[William Rehnquist]], [[Antonin Scalia]], and [[Clarence Thomas]] in the majority.

[[Chief Justice of the United States|Chief Justice]] [[William Rehnquist]], writing for the majority, stated that "The incidental advancement of a religious mission, or the perceived endorsement of a religious message, is reasonably attributable to the individual aid recipients, not the government, whose role ends with the disbursement of benefits." The Supreme Court ruled that the Ohio program did not violate the [[Establishment Clause]], because it passed a five-part test developed by the Court in this case, titled the Private Choice Test.

Dissenting opinions included Justice Stevens's, who wrote "...the voluntary character of the private choice to prefer a parochial education over an education in the public school system seems to me quite irrelevant to the question whether the government's choice to pay for religious indoctrination is constitutionally permissible" and Justice Souter's, whose opinion questioned how the Court could keep ''[[Everson v. Board of Education]]'' on as precedent and decide this case in the way they did, feeling it was contradictory.

In 2006, the Florida Supreme Court struck down legislation known as the [[Florida Opportunity Scholarship Program]] (OSP), which would have implemented a system of school vouchers in Florida.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Court Throws Out Florida School Voucher Program |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5159138 |access-date=April 21, 2006 |website=[[NPR]]}}</ref> The court ruled that the OSP violated article IX, section 1(a) of the Florida Constitution: "Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high-quality system of free public schools."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Florida Supreme Court Official Opinion: SC04-2323 – John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, Etc., Et Al. v. Ruth D. Holmes, Et Al. |url=http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/decisions/2006/sc04-2323.pdf |access-date=November 1, 2006}}</ref> This decision was criticized by Clark Neily, [[Institute for Justice]] senior attorney and  legal counsel to Pensacola families using Florida Opportunity Scholarships, as "educational policymaking".<ref>{{Cite web |title=United States Court of Appeals, Twelfth Circuit |url=http://www.trolp.org/main_pgs/issues/v10n2/Neily.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728130452/http://www.trolp.org/main_pgs/issues/v10n2/Neily.pdf |archive-date=July 28, 2011 |access-date=August 11, 2011 |df=mdy-all}}</ref>