Vouching for the First Amendment but Getting a Sideshow Instead

by: Deborah Jacobs, ACLU-NJ Executive Director

Fri May 14, 2010 at 01:30:17 PM EDT

Yesterday morning wasn't the usual in Trenton. I had expected to testify against S1872, which creates a school voucher system in New Jersey. But instead of a hearing before the Senate Economic Growth Committee, I found myself at a rally of voucher supporters - mostly children attending private schools and their parents. From a basic strategic standpoint, they weren't the best faces for their cause, having an obvious, direct financial interest in the bill's passage - S1872 reserves 25 percent of the funding for private schools for families with students already in private schools. But I suppose they made up for their self- interest with enthusiasm.

The hearing became a cheerleading session when Senator Raymond Lesniak, the committee chairman and the bill's sponsor, expressed his outrage at the NJEA members who had filled the hearing room, while his hundreds of voucher supporters rallied outside. I understand why the situation frustrated him, but there were other, more productive, less divisive ways to solve the problem.

Instead, we all paid the price for his political theater. His sideshow cost the committee and those following the debate meaningful input from groups like the ACLU-NJ, Education Law Center, League of Women Voters, and NAACP. Instead of delivering my remarks collegially, seated at a table facing the legislators voting on the bill, I was forced to speak with my back to the legislators who were scarcely paying attention anyway. It's hard enough to hold legislators' attention in a hearing room with decorum, let alone with your back turned to them at a rally. It felt like an exercise in disrespect for the bill's opponents, the hearing process, and the constitutional analysis I had come to share.

At the end of the day Senator Lesniak said that the kids had learned a lesson in civics - but he was teaching from a bad curriculum. The students had been taken out of the classroom for the day to witness a mockery of the democratic process.  

The ACLU has long opposed voucher systems because they direct taxpayer dollars to private religious schools, in violation of the very religious freedom that gave birth to America. The New Jersey Constitution, which protects separation of church and state even more strictly than the U.S. Constitution, says that no person shall "be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or other rates for building or repairing any church or churches, place or places of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he believes to be right or has deliberately and voluntarily engaged to perform."

Just because S1872 filters state money through corporations doesn't mean the taxpayers aren't spending public dollars on religious institutions. Our founders understood that religion can best flourish when government bows out, neither discriminating against nor endorsing any religion. This protects the rights of individual citizens to believe, or not believe, as they wish. It protects religious institutions from depending on the government's charity or resisting the government's control.

Beyond my constitutional objections as the head of the ACLU of New Jersey, I've learned that vouchers pose other serious threats on the public policy stage - undermining transparency, civil rights law, and even students' academic opportunities, and spreading the misconception that private school students necessarily outperform those in public schools. Statistics have shown little difference. (Not to mention, private schools are free to reject any student for any reason.)

I urge people weighing this issue to look at the Education Law Center's analysis to learn more about the real-world implications of vouchers. I hope that after looking to the facts you'll decide that you can't vouch for the displacement of public-school funding to benefit private and religious schools either.

After the voucher show, the day in Trenton became more typical. I attended a press conference featuring nine women legislators who came together for National Women's Health Week to discuss their opposition to Governor Christie's proposal to cut 100 percent of family planning funding in the budget, and to propose some alternatives. It wasn't until about half way through the press conference, and Senator Weinberg's presentation on alternatives, that the first and only press to cover this dire matter arrived - a camera from NJN. I'm guessing he could relate on the budget cut front.