A unanimous panel of Ohio’s 10th District Court of Appeals ruled the state’s Educational Choice Scholarship program unconstitutional on Thursday, dealing a sharp blow to a system that the EdChoice organization says supports more than 100,000 families.
Reason reported that the court held the EdChoice program violates Article VI, Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution. That clause requires the state to secure a “thorough and efficient system of common schools.” The panel said the scholarships fund a “competing system of uncommon schools.”
The legal stakes are immediate for parents who rely on the aid, for public districts that sued to kill it, and for the state’s authority to let families pick schools outside the assigned public system. Families using EdChoice and the state’s attorney general plan to take the fight to the Ohio Supreme Court. Scholarships will continue while the case remains pending.
Judge David Leland wrote for the court. He argued EdChoice schools “actually end up depriving families of choice.” He called the defendants’ appeals to choice “a fundamental misnomer,” saying the power to admit students rests with the schools, not the families.
The opinion pointed to private schools’ selective admissions and their concentration in urban areas. In the court’s view, that structure undercuts the constitutional duty to maintain common schools open to students across the state.
Vouchers Hurt Ohio, a coalition of public school districts, brought the challenge. The group banded together in 2022 to sue the state. It has argued the program drains money from public schools. Its website states that “private school vouchers create a system of state-funded discrimination” and that school choice is a “myth.”
EdChoice operates in two main tracks. The Traditional Plan has existed since 2005. Under that plan, annual scholarships run as high as $6,166 for elementary and middle school and as high as $8,408 for high school.
State lawmakers created the Expansion Program in 2013. EdChoice says that track uses the same maximum amounts as the Traditional Plan, but scales awards based on family income. The nonprofit describes the broader scholarship effort as serving more than 100,000 Ohio families.
Related state options include the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship and the Cleveland Scholarship program, which aids K-12 students living in the Cleveland Municipal School District. Those programs sit in the same policy space the appeals court just constrained.
Keith Neely, an attorney at the Institute for Justice who represents families using EdChoice, rejected the panel’s approach. He told Reason the court’s view is wrong on the constitution and on how ordinary people understand the issue.
“I think that's just fundamentally wrong as a matter of constitutional interpretation and also just as a matter of public understanding,”
Neely said the court treated every dollar spent on scholarships as a dollar pulled from public schools. He called that a basic error about how state budgeting works.
“The court seemed to take the view that any dollar spent on other educational programs like scholarships is a dollar that could be spent on public schools instead, but that's not how budgeting works,”
He stressed that the program funds families, not a rival school system run by the state. In his account, that distinction should control the constitutional analysis.
Neely pointed the next court to Simmons-Harris v. Goff, the 1999 Ohio Supreme Court decision on school choice. In that case, the high court partially reversed a lower ruling and found school choice constitutional under the same public-education clause.
The court still invalidated the Cleveland scholarship program then before it, finding it was “improperly enacted by the legislature,” as the Institute for Justice has described the result. The Ohio Legislature later reenacted the program.
Neely argued the text of the constitution and the Simmons-Harris holding leave the high court little room to affirm Thursday’s decision.
“When you look at what the Constitution says, and you look at what the court said in Simmons-Harris, I think the only conclusion that the Ohio Supreme Court can walk away with is that programs like the Educational Choice Scholarship program are constitutional.”
The ruling lands in a state and national setting where many families already face tight public options. A Reason Foundation report by senior policy analyst Jude Schwalbach examined open enrollment laws that “allow students to transfer to public schools other than their residentially assigned one, provided space is available.”
That report found 80 percent of public-school students live in states with “weak or ineffective open enrollment laws.” When district transfer rules are weak, scholarships become one of the few workable exits from a failing assigned school.
Thursday’s decision does not erase those limits. It does raise the risk that a major private option will shrink if the Ohio Supreme Court leaves the appeals ruling in place.
Families and the state’s attorney general will ask the Ohio Supreme Court to reverse the 10th District. Until that court acts, families may keep their scholarships.
Investigators of the legal record will need to determine how the high court weighs Article VI, Section 2 against the earlier Simmons-Harris analysis. The justices will also need to decide whether selective private admissions and urban concentration convert a family scholarship into an unlawful rival system of schools.
No public results have been released on the full case caption, docket number, or any broader injunctive language beyond the unconstitutionality holding and the continuation of aid during the appeal. The absolute calendar date of the Thursday ruling has not been fixed in the available account beyond the relative reference.
Vouchers Hurt Ohio framed the case as a defense of public funding and common schools. The coalition’s public materials cast vouchers as discrimination and dismiss choice as illusion.
Families on the other side, through counsel at the Institute for Justice, frame the same dollars as portable aid that follows the student. Neely’s budget point goes to that clash: scholarship line items and public-school appropriations are not a single zero-sum pot under ordinary state finance practice.
The 10th District sided with the districts’ constitutional theory. The attorney general’s decision to join families on appeal puts the state’s elected law officer against the appeals court’s reading of the education clause.
Ohio lawmakers built the Traditional Plan in 2005 and the Expansion Program in 2013. The legislature also rebuilt the Cleveland program after the 1999 invalidation on enactment grounds. That history shows repeated policy support for scholarships even after judicial friction.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed whether the opinion freezes new awards in ways that go beyond the stated ability of current families to keep aid during litigation. Investigators will need to determine the precise scope of relief once the full order and any follow-on trial-court steps are clear.
The panel’s focus on admissions control and urban concentration leaves open how rural or special-needs scholarships would fare under the same test. The Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship and the Cleveland program remain part of the wider statute book, yet Thursday’s reasoning could invite fresh challenges if the high court adopts it.
Reason’s account anchors the ruling, the key constitutional phrases, the Leland language on choice, the VHO claims, the Neely response, and the planned Supreme Court appeal. Those points set the field for the next round.
When courts treat parental scholarships as a threat to “common schools,” families lose leverage and districts gain a veto over exit. The Ohio Supreme Court now has to say whether the constitution demands that result or protects the wider set of options parents have used for two decades.
