State claims spending school funds at religious 'organizations' is OK because many are not 'institutions'
An educational organization is not necessarily an educational institution, according to the Dunleavy administration.
The league of state synonymists is pinning its legal hopes in the landmark school funding case on a flimsy claim that the words organization and institution are not interchangeable.
That’s relevant because the Alaska Constitution prohibits spending public funds at “any religious or private educational institution,” but it doesn’t say anything about public funds spent on religious or private organizations.
The allotment law adopted a decade ago mentions buying services from private and religious organizations, a practice the Dunleavy administration claims is legal that has been struck down by an Anchorage Superior Court.
The constitutional ban applies only to the subset of private and religious organizations that are institutions, according to Alaska Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor and the high-priced attorney he has hired from Virginia to help argue the case, Elbert Lin.
The Alaska Supreme Court is to hear oral arguments on the appeal Thursday at 10 a.m. in an Anchorage courtroom.
In striking down the decade-old provisions championed by Sen. Mike Dunleavy to get more money to private schools, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman made quick work of rejecting the state wordsmiths.
He said the state discussion about organization vs. institution was not “compelling” and there was nothing in the legislative history to back up the theory.
In explaining his idea a decade ago, Sen. Mike Dunleavy said the law would allow parents to purchase services and materials “from a private or religious organization” with a student allotment.
But even Dunleavy understood then that the plan would be unconstitutional. He proposed a constitutional amendment, but that was rejected by the Legislature. The Dunleavy plan, which Dunleavy said was unconstitutional, was approved.
The allotment change to allow private school funding wasn’t challenged in court until last year, but its constitutional failing has long been understood by some in the legal profession.
The law was drafted “with the express purpose of allowing purchases of private educational services with the public correspondence student allotments,” Zeman wrote. Here is his court ruling.
“Here, the plain text of the statutes clearly authorizes purchasing educational services and materials from private organizations with public funds, in direct contravention of the direct benefit prohibition of the Alaska Constitution,” Zeman wrote in his decision.
The state claims that Zeman shows a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the Alaska Constitution and that there is no evidence that giving money to private organizations is a “direct contravention” of the Alaska Constitution. “A book publisher, for example, is not an ‘educational institution,’” state attorneys said.
In his decision, Zeman said the Merriam-Webster dictionary “defines ‘institution’ as ‘an established organization or corporation” and that one of the first synonyms in the book for institution is organization.
He said there was “no workable way to construe the statutes to allow only constitutional spending” and the law should be struck down. “If the Legislature believes these expenditures are necessary—then it is up to them to craft constitutional legislation to serve that purpose—that is not this court’s role,” Zeman wrote.
The lawyers for the parents and the National Education Assocation, the winning parties in the case, claim it is the state that has intentionally misread the lower court ruling by Zeman. Here is their brief filed with the Supreme Court.
The provisions championed by Dunleavy in 2014 “expressly authorize paying for education conducted at private institutions with public funds,” which is why the law violates the Constitution, wrote attorneys Scott Kendall and Lauren Sherman of Cashion Gilmore & Lindemuth in Anchorage.
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