Supreme Court to Weigh Arizona Tuition Tax Credits

In a move welcomed by school choice supporters, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to weigh the constitutionality of a 13-year-old Arizona program offering tax credits for donations made to organizations that provide scholarships for children to attend private schools.

The case accepted May 24 involves a ruling by a federal appeals court last year that Arizona’s tax-credit program is likely to impermissibly advance religion in violation of the First Amendment’s prohibition against any government establishment of religion.

A three-judge panel of the U.S, Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, in an April 2009 decision about whether a challenge to the program could go forward, found that the majority of those Arizona scholarships go to students attending religious schools, and that some of the “school tuition organizations,” or STOs, restrict their...