The court found that the ballot measure does not target an appropriation, which is prohibited by law
The ruling came just days after the state’s high court heard arguments Tuesday in a lawsuit brought by an eastern Nebraska woman whose child received one of the first private school tuition scholarships available through the new law. Her lawsuit argued that the referendum initiative violates the state constitution’s prohibition on voter initiatives to revoke legislative appropriations for government functions.
An attorney for the referendum effort countered that the ballot question appropriately targets the creation of the private school tuition program — not the $10 million appropriations bill that accompanied it.
The Nebraska Supreme Court's ruling comes after a long fight over the private school funding issue. Public school advocates carried out a successful signature-gathering effort this summer to ask voters to reverse the use of public money for private school tuition.
Support Our Schools collected far more signatures last summer than was needed to ask voters to repeal that law. But lawmakers who support the private school funding bill carried out an end-run around the ballot initiative when they repealed the original law and replaced it earlier this year with another funding law. The new law dumped the tax credit funding system and simply funds private school scholarships directly from state coffers.
Because the move repealed the first law, it rendered last year’s successful petition effort moot, requiring organizers to again collect signatures to try to stop the funding scheme.
Nebraska’s new law follows several other conservative Republican states — including Arkansas, Iowa and South Carolina — in enacting some form of private school choice, from vouchers to education savings account programs.
