## Facts

- A Colorado school district adopted a Choice Scholarship Pilot Program that used public funds to provide scholarships to qualifying K–12 students for tuition at participating private schools.
- Most participating private schools were religiously affiliated, and many were characterized as pervasively sectarian in their curriculum and operations.
- Scholarship checks were issued in the parents’ names but mailed to the chosen private school, where the parent endorsed the check to the school.
- Taxpayers, parents, and religious-liberty organizations sued, alleging violations of the Public School Finance Act of 1994 and multiple provisions of the Colorado Constitution, including the no-aid clause (art. IX, § 7).
- The trial court permanently enjoined the program; the court of appeals reversed.

## Issues

1. Whether the plaintiffs had standing to challenge the program under the Public School Finance Act of 1994.
2. Whether the program violated Colorado Constitution article IX, section 7 by using public money to help support or sustain church-controlled or sectarian schools.
3. Whether other Colorado constitutional education and religion provisions were violated (not necessary to resolve given the dispositive holdings).

## Decision

- The Colorado Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals.
- The court held plaintiffs lacked standing to sue under the Public School Finance Act because the Act did not confer a private right of action.
- The court held the program violated article IX, section 7 of the Colorado Constitution because it used public funds to pay tuition at sectarian private schools.
- The case was remanded with directions that the trial court’s permanent injunction against the program be reinstated.

## Legal Principles

- A statute does not supply standing absent an express or implied private right of action; courts will not infer a broad private-attorney-general enforcement mechanism without legislative indication.
- Colorado Constitution article IX, section 7 prohibits the state and its subdivisions from appropriating public money to help support or sustain any church or sectarian society, or any school controlled by a church or sectarian denomination.
- In applying article IX, section 7, courts look to the program’s practical operation; routing funds through parents does not avoid a constitutional violation when public money is transmitted to sectarian schools as tuition payments.
- Federal Establishment Clause permissibility of neutral, private-choice aid programs does not control where the state constitution imposes a stricter bar on aid to sectarian institutions.

## Conclusion

The Colorado Supreme Court concluded that the plaintiffs could not proceed under the Public School Finance Act, but it nonetheless invalidated the district’s scholarship program under the Colorado Constitution’s no-aid clause because the program functioned to channel public funds to sectarian private schools, requiring reinstatement of the permanent injunction.


Taxpayers for Pub. Educ. v. Douglas Cnty. Sch. Dist., 351 P.3d 461 (Colo. 2015)