By DAN JUNEAU

By a 5-to-4 margin, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of Cleveland’s school voucher program in its Zelman v. Simmons-Harris decision, and in doing so unleashed a powerful weapon for reform on the education landscape of America.

Clint Bolick, vice president of the Institute for Justice, summed the victory up best when he said: “This was the Super Bowl for school choice, and the kids won.”

Over a number of years, the Institute for Justice has compiled an impressive list of victories, arguing in the courts to give poor parents the right to choose the best school for their children. The Zelman case, more so than any other, may have finally let the school choice genie permanently out of the bottle.

After years of dismal performance by students in Cleveland’s public schools, the Ohio Legislature passed a school voucher bill for the system in 1995. The legislation allowed poor parents to apply for a voucher of up to $2,250 to send their children to the public, private, or parochial school of their choice. The Ohio law has been in the courts ever since, but was given its final clearance by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 27.

U.S. Secretary of Education, Dr. Rod Paige, was quick to assess the huge impact Zelman will have on both education and law: “Obviously, the court’s establishment clause jurisprudence is shifting. The wall of separation between church and state – a wall that for a long time has meant not only government neutrality toward religion but hostility toward it – apparently has become somewhat permeable.

If sectarian institutions are capable of providing a nonsectarian education to students, especially students who otherwise would be stuck in schools that don’t work, then they should be free to compete for those students and the public dollars that come with them.

“The court correctly reasons that a public interest – education – can be advanced by a private, in this case religiously affiliated, institution.”

What is more important than legal analysis and partisan rhetoric is the viewpoint of the parents whose rights were upheld in Zelman. Roberta Kitchen is one of those individuals.

“Now I have the same opportunity to choose a good school for my child that wealthier parents have had for years because they could afford to buy a home where there are better schools,” Kitchen noted. “Now we have a real chance to close the gap between the quality of education that poor and rich children receive. School choice means that my children will no longer be ignored or taken for granted.

“We now have the power to choose something better. We can vote with our feet!”

Kitchen’s comments echoed the words from Justice Clarence Thomas’ consenting opinion in which he evoked the powerful words of Frederick Douglass: “Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty.”

It is interesting the school voucher decision arrived in the same week that the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal outlawed recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.

The legal issue in question in that instance is the same one that swirls the controversy in the school voucher cases: the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. Opponents of school vouchers, nativity scenes in public places, and use of the word “God” in the pledge and on our currency make the argument the mere mentioning of deity breeches the constitutional safeguard against the state establishing a religion.

The decision is a necessary step toward reigning in such ludicrous applications of the Establishment Clause. If the G.I. bill could allow veterans, at public expense, to attend Notre Dame, SMU, or even seminaries without a constitutional crisis, then the same dollars should be given to poor parents to give their kids the best chance possible for a decent education.

The words just may fork the lightning of reform.

DAN JUNEAU is the president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.