New Hampshire Business Tax Credit Scholarship Program

Duncan v. State of New Hampshire
Institute for Justice, New Hampshire Parents, and the Network for Educational Choice Defend School Choice in the Granite State

	IJ clients Miguel and Shalimar Encarnacion, with son Miguel and daughter Angelica.

On February 22, 2013, the Institute for Justice successfully intervened in a state court lawsuit challenging New Hampshire’s Business Tax Credit Scholarship Program. IJ seeks to defend the program on behalf of parents and the Network for Educational Opportunity (“NEO”), a nonprofit scholarship granting organization that raises money under the program and awards scholarships to low-income families. The lawsuit was filed by several New Hampshire taxpayers represented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the American Civil Liberties Union and its state affiliate.

New Hampshire’s Business Tax Credit Scholarship Program offers local businesses a partial tax credit (85 percent) for voluntary donations made to private, nonprofit scholarship organizations that fund education scholarships to low-income families. Qualifying parents may choose to send their children to tuition-charging public schools in neighboring school districts, or to home school their children, or to pay for tuition at any of the state’s private or religious schools. The lawsuit claims that the tax credit program violates two of the New Hampshire Constitution’s religion clauses by allegedly using money raised by taxation to compel taxpayers to support religious schools.

But education tax credit programs do not violate state constitutional provisions that prohibit state funds from directly aiding religious schools because tax credit programs rely entirely on private funds, private organizations, and private decision makers. Private individuals set up scholarship organizations. Private businesses donate to scholarship organizations. And parents decide whether to apply for a scholarship and which schools to enroll their children into best meet their unique educational needs.

One of the parents that IJ represents, Shalimar Encarnacion, exemplifies how desperately New Hampshire families need educational choice. She has applied to NEO on behalf of her two children, 14-year-old Angelica and 10-year-old Miguel. Angelica is a cancer survivor whose cognitive abilities are still adversely affected by the extensive chemotherapy she underwent. Miguel has ADHD and is often isolated by his current public school teacher as a means of discipline rather than redirected and given positive reinforcement. Both of Shalimar’s children need smaller class sizes and more individual attention—something that Shalimar believes she has found in a nearby Christian school. Unfortunately, Shalimar and her husband cannot afford the tuition absent financial assistance of the sort that NEO plans to provide to families like the Encarnacions.

IJ is the nation’s leading legal advocate for educational choice and has represented parents and children in defense of school choice programs nationwide for more than 20 years. Significantly, IJ successfully defended tax-credit-funded scholarship programs that are similar to New Hampshire’s in Arizona and Illinois.