Today, Douglas County Schools announced it would take its voucher program to the U.S. Supreme Court and Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman would support the effort with a letter. In June, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the program, which would allow parents to use the funds allocated to their children through the schools for tuition at any school – including private school, was not kosher.
The truth here is that the program was in violation of the Blaine Amendment. Conservatives have been waiting for some time to take on the racist piece of legislation found in many states across the country. Here’s what the Wall Street Journal said about the Blaine Amendment over ten years ago:
“’The Blaine movement,’ writes Tony Mauro in Legal Times, ‘grew out of nativist and anti-immigrant sentiments in the second half of the 19th Century, gaining momentum when Catholics began to object to the pervasively Protestant climate of public or ‘common’ schools at the time.’
Blaine proposed his bill after Catholics began asking states for funds to start their own schools. His efforts failed at the federal level, but state legislatures cottoned to the idea, and by 1890 29 states had Blaine provisions incorporated in their constitutions. Today, every state — save Maine, Louisiana and North Carolina — has Blaine language or its equivalent still on the books….
…Meanwhile, it’s worth stressing the spectacle of reform opponents — good ‘liberals’ all — invo
king a century-old relic of religious bigotry in order to keep children shackled to our nation’s worst schools. Their methods evoke the poll taxes and grandfather clauses that were hastily employed by states after Reconstruction to deny blacks suffrage guaranteed them by the U.S. Constitution. What lovely moral company the NAACP and the teachers’ unions now keep.”
And, now, with Douglas County, conservatives have their chance. But, the question is whether liberals will side with this disgusting piece of American racism or stand up for kids.