Credit Reginald Hardwick / WKAR-MSU A deadlock on the Michigan Supreme Court has effectively reversed a ban on any taxpayer funds going to private and religious schools. The decision allows state funds to go toward helping schools comply with health and safety mandates.
Religious organizations cheered the decision, while public school administrators and teachers unions won’t rule out a renewed challenge. Republican-led legislatures approved nominal funding in two state budgets to test the limits of a 1970 voter-approved amendment to the Michigan Constitution. The amendment includes this provision:
No public monies or property shall be appropriated or paid or any public credit utilized, by the legislature or any other political subdivision or agency of the state directly or indirectly to aid or maintain any private, denominational or other nonpublic, pre-elementary, elementary, or secondary school. No payment, credit, tax benefit, exemption or deductions, tuition voucher, subsidy, grant or loan of public monies or property shall be provided, directly or indirectly, to support the attendance of any student or the employment of any person at any such nonpublic school or at any location or institution where instruction is offered in whole or in part to such nonpublic school students. The legislature may provide for the transportation of students to and from any school.