Parents Fight To Restore Scholarship Program In South Carolina

Yamilette Albertson is a single mom, a former Marine, and an operations manager at a South Carolina paint store. She and her children are beneficiaries of the state’s Education Scholarship Trust Fund program. This program provides thousands of children from low-income families with scholarships that their parents can use for virtually any educational expense. For her part, Yamilette used the scholarships to send her three children to a local private school, where they have been thriving.

That all changed in September, when the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that she could no longer use the scholarships to send her children to private school. According to the Court, the state Constitution permits her to use the scholarships for numerous educational expenses—tuition and fees at out-of-district public schools, expenses related to home schooling, textbooks, tutoring, and more—but one category of expense is forbidden: private school tuition and fees. 

The Court based its ruling on the state Blaine Amendment. Most Blaine Amendments, which prohibit public funding of religious schools, were invalidated following a series of IJ wins at the U.S. Supreme Court. But South Carolina’s Blaine bars public funds from going to any private educational institutions, not just religious ones. 

Yamilette is working with IJ to challenge the policy that the state Department of Education adopted in response to this ruling. Her argument is straightforward: The government cannot penalize her for exercising her right under the U.S. Constitution to direct the education and upbringing of her children, including by sending them to private school. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly called this right “fundamental,” and it has even likened it to “the specific freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights.” As with those rights, the government can no more penalize a person for how she educates her children than it can punish her for how she votes, how she speaks, or how she practices her religion. And that applies even when a state is purportedly required by its own state constitution to discriminate against people when they exercise a right. 

If Yamilette prevails, she will strike a critical blow against one of the few Blaine Amendments that were unaffected by IJ’s prior educational choice victories. Not only that, she will reinforce the venerable constitutional principle that the government cannot penalize a person for exercising a right. And that’s a victory for everyone.

David Hodges is an IJ attorney.