Agudath Israel Welcomes Judge’s Decision —
Agudath Israel of America, a longtime supporter of Florida’s scholarship tax credit program, welcomed a circuit court ruling on Tuesday which dismissed a teachers union lawsuit. Chief Circuit Judge Charles Francis said in his decision that the plaintiffs failed to show legal standing as they didn’t prove how the scholarship programs would harm them.
The case was one of two lawsuits filed earlier this year by the Florida teachers unions and other groups. Their main claim in this case was that the creation of Florida’s new Personal Learning Scholarship Account (PLSA) and the expansion of the existing scholarship tax credit program violated the state’s “single subject” rule by combining various issues into one bill. This is the second time that the lawsuit has been dismissed for lack of standing.
“Florida’s students were once again vindicated by the courts” said Agudath Israel’s Florida director, Rabbi Moshe Matz. “Nearly 70,000 low-income students, many of them in Jewish schools, benefit from the scholarship tax credit program and another 1000 students with special needs were awarded PLSA scholarships. It is time for the unions to simply drop the lawsuit and allow these children to receive an education in the setting chosen by their parents.”