Three Catholic families are suing the State of Georgia, alleging that the terms of the state’s school choice scholarship programme violate their religious beliefs by requiring their children to attend public school first.
The suit was filed on Monday, August 24, in DeKalb County Superior Court on behalf of the Tootle, Sands and McCall families, who say they do not wish to enrol their children in a failing public school in order to gain access to the state’s “Promise Scholarship” programme. The families are being represented by the Thomas More Society, a Catholic law firm based in Illinois.
The Promise Scholarship was created in 2024 by the Georgia legislature and awards families up to US$6,500 per child each year to attend a public, private or home-school programme. In order to be eligible, a child must spend two consecutive semesters in a public school and has to be assigned to a public school that has been designated as “failing” by the State of Georgia.
Joyce McCall, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said that her family has already endured the area’s public schools and does not wish to do so again.
“We tried public school with our daughter, and it changed her for the worse,” said Joyce McCall in a press release published by the Thomas More Society.
McCall continued: “She hid her faith just to fit in, she struggled to make friends because her peers didn’t share her values and often excluded her, and she fell behind in her religious development because there was nothing left in her at the end of the day for anything more. We pulled her out and eventually enrolled her in a Catholic hybrid home-school. Today she’s a missionary.”
But in order for her son to be eligible for the Promise Scholarship, the state “wants us to put our son through that same public school before we can even ask for help paying for the kind of education that turned our daughter’s life around”, she said. “We won’t do that to him.”
There is no religious exemption available when a family does not wish to fulfil the eligibility requirements for the Promise Scholarship, said the Thomas More Society, so this lawsuit is requesting one. Exemptions for secular reasons are applied on a case-by-case basis.
“These families aren’t asking for special treatment. They’re asking Georgia to stop punishing them for their faith,” said Nathan Loyd, staff counsel at the Thomas More Society, in a press release.
“Georgia already excuses other families from these same requirements for secular reasons. But it won’t do the same for a family for religious reasons. That’s a clear violation of these families’ religious liberty rights,” he said.
Even with the existing restrictions, only about US$50 million of the US$141 million budgeted for the Promise Scholarship was distributed last year, noted the Thomas More Society.
“The Promise Scholarship is exactly the kind of programme Georgia should be proud of, and these families simply want the chance to benefit from it like everyone else,” said Loyd. “This isn’t a request for new spending. All we’re asking is that religious families get to do the exact same thing secular families already can.”
