A federal court has approved a settlement between a group of Vermont parents and state education officials, finally putting an end to a two-year legal battle over whether the government can deny families of education aid money just because they use the money at religious schools.
Under the terms of the agreement (pdf), signed off Thursday by a U.S. District Court judge, Vermont will no longer exclude religious schools from its tuition benefit program, reimburse families who have wrongly denied tuition, and pay attorneys’ fees.
Vermont’s tuition program, one of the oldest of its kind in the United States, provides education vouchers for students living in towns that are usually too small or sparsely populated to have a public school. Designated “sending towns” receive the money and pay tuition directly to the school of the student’s choice, which can be public, secular private, or home school in or outside Vermont….