(NEW YORK CITY, NY) – Educational freedom is the cornerstone of a child’s future. Yet Vermont is currently using a legislative loophole to deny that freedom to religious families. To protect the constitutional rights of parents and students, the Liberty Justice Center’s PARENTS Initiative has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit supporting Alliance Defending Freedom’s federal challenge in Mid Vermont Christian Academy v. Saunders. The brief urges the Court to reverse a lower court decision and stop the state from enforcing “Act 73,” a law that entrenches unconstitutional religious discrimination in Vermont’s education system.
For over 150 years, Vermont’s “town tuitioning” system has allowed students in towns without public schools to use public tuition support to attend an approved school of their choice. However, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Carson v. Makin (2022) that states cannot exclude religious schools from such programs, the Vermont Legislature enacted Act 73. This law includes a “25 percent enrollment” threshold based specifically on the 2023-2024 school year—a baseline chosen while religious schools remained effectively excluded from full participation. By freezing the pre-Carson status quo, Act 73 effectively locks many religious schools out of Vermont’s tuitioning system going forward.
The Liberty Justice Center filed this brief on behalf of its PARENTS Initiative and is currently litigating its own challenge to Act 73 in Caspers v. State of Vermont, filed February 27, 2026. The outcome of Mid Vermont Christian Academy v. Saunders will have direct consequences on the families represented by the Liberty Justice Center in Caspers.
“The Vermont government has all but expressly singled out religious schools and students for exclusion from a public benefit,” said Timothy R. Snowball, Senior Counsel for the Liberty Justice Center and lead for the PARENTS Initiative. “This double standard not only violates the federal Constitution, but also Vermont’s own state Constitution.”
The PARENTS Initiative is a core project of the Liberty Justice Center, dedicated to protecting the fundamental rights of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children. Through strategic litigation and advocacy, the PARENTS Initiative fights to ensure that educational funding follows the student, not the system, and that no family is forced to choose between their faith and their child’s education.
The Liberty Justice Center’s amicus brief in Mid Vermont Christian Academy v. Saunders is available here.
The Liberty Justice Center’s filings in Caspers v. State of Vermont are available here.
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