This from Drudge piqued my interest. Also, it raises a number of interesting questions. Now, I think we can all agree that private organizations have a right to accept and reject members or participants as they see fit, vis a vis The Boy Scouts of America. I think we can all also agree that we do not like the exclusion of individuals based on their sexuality, but that in America the freedom of association gives private groups the right to do so. To my mind, those questions are settled, and that’s not the interesting bit.

The interesting bit is whether or not a school that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation can accept money in the form of vouchers and whether or not such a school is obligated to tell parents and students up front about their policy. It seems to me that the real question is whether or not vouchers are technically public money. And, I suppose, that probably depends on the way the voucher system in Florida is set up. If the State gives a family, say, a cash refund from its taxes that must be used for tuition, I’d probably argue that it isn’t technically public money. But, if the State directly pays the tuition for a voucher, then the money might technically be public. It’s sort of like basketball, the team who touched it last loses possession if the ball goes out of bounds. The other tidbit is that in order to accept vouchers the school must not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin. I wonder where the ACLU will come down on this one…first amendment or anti-discrimination?

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 25th, 2003 at 21:58 by Timothy and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.