Dozens of religious groups and hundreds of faith leaders are speaking out against a federal school voucher program currently under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives.
If approved as part of a legislative funding package, the Educational Choice for Children Act would funnel $5 billion annually to home schooling, for-profit virtual education and private school tuition. Passage also would fulfill President Donald Trump’s executive order vowing “education freedom” for American families and the goal of Project 2025 to dismantle public education.
But opponents argue the measure would divert unprecedented levels of public funding for private, mostly faith-based education and deny adequate education to Americans in low-income and rural communities.
“This would essentially create a direct transfer of taxpayer funds away from the public trust and into private schools.”
And it would provide tax cuts to the wealthy by enabling them to make contributions to organizations established to underwrite private K-12 education, according to religious groups including Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Alliance of Baptists, Interfaith Alliance and Pastors for Children, who warned leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee in a May 12 letter.
“This would essentially create a direct transfer of taxpayer funds away from the public trust and into private schools,” the letter says. “The only people who win in this scenario are wealthy, sophisticated investors who would make money while our students lose.”
The “tax credit scheme” also will cause harm to churches, food banks, homeless shelters, veterans’ groups and other grassroots nonprofits by incentivizing contributions to vouchers instead, the faith groups said. “Because of our rich tapestry of beliefs, we cannot sit idly by and allow a policy that would line the pockets of the wealthy at the expense of our children and our faith communities. We therefore come together to urge you to reject any effort to include private school vouchers in the reconciliation process.”
The debate over government-funded private education has been a busy one in 2025, with several states considering new or expanded “school choice” programs and a U.S. Supreme Court case that could result in taxpayer financing for religiously owned and operated charter schools.
According to analysis by Education Week, 30 states and the District of Columbia already provide one or more forms of public funding for private education, whether as tax-credit scholarships, education savings accounts, vouchers or direct tax credits.
30 states and the District of Columbia already provide one or more forms of public funding for private education.
Texas became one of the latest to the game after Gov. Greg Abbott signed a billion-dollar voucher plan May 3 following years of political arm-twisting and vendettas against legislators opposed to the program. The policy provides $10,000 per private school student, $30,000 for those with disabilities and $2,000 ESAs for home school students.
When put to a public vote, voucher proposals never have passed. Voters in Colorado and Kentucky shot down 2024 ballot initiatives seeking to add vouchers to their state constitutions, while Nebraskans repealed their state’s voucher law in a November referendum.
Then there is the case of St. Seville Catholic Virtual School in Oklahoma. Granted state charter school status in 2023, the project went on to face federal litigation and later ruled unconstitutional by the state’s high court. This would be the nation’s first publicly funded sectarian charter school.
“Under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school. As such, a charter school must be nonsectarian,” Oklahoma Justice James Winchester wrote for the majority. “This state’s establishment of a religious charter school violates Oklahoma statutes, the Oklahoma Constitution and the Establishment Clause.”
The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently agreed to hear the case, and during oral arguments in April seemed sympathetic to the claim that denying charter status to St. Seville violates organizers’ Free Exercise rights. Justice Brent Kavanaugh suggested granting the designation for a religious school is no different than granting it to a science-based institution.
“So, what you’re basically saying … there’s no Establishment Clause really,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor replied. “What you’re saying is the Free Exercise Clause trumps the essence of the Establishment Clause because the essence of the Establishment Clause was we’re not going to pay religious leaders to teach their religion.”
Now, the proposal for a federal charter school program is in fact a threat to religious liberty, ministers and religious groups said in the letter to federal legislators.
“Vouchers also threaten the autonomy of religious schools by opening them up to government audits, control and interference.”
“Religious freedom protects every American by ensuring that the government cannot force any of us to pay for someone else’s religious education,” the letter says. “Yet taxpayer-funded vouchers primarily go to religious schools. Vouchers also threaten the autonomy of religious schools by opening them up to government audits, control and interference.”
The plan also would put government in the position of providing faith instruction, the letter asserts. “The responsibility for religious education belongs to families, houses of worship and other religious institutions — we do not need or want the government to be involved.”
Separately, BJC said the measure will not provide faith-based communities the independence from public oversight they are seeking.
“This bill forces the public to subsidize private faith. It asks a single mom in rural Tennessee to pay taxes that go to a religious school in another state she’ll never see. It asks a veteran in Kansas to fund theology he doesn’t share. It turns believers into beggars for federal dollars — and churches into clients of the state. That’s not freedom. That’s dependence.”
Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, urged Congress to reject what would essentially be a federally funded religious school system.
“Public funds belong in public schools. Our country’s public schools are open to all and educate 90% of America’s students. Congress must not divert billions of taxpayer dollars to private religious schools that can discriminate and indoctrinate,” she said.
“Private school vouchers don’t work: They don’t improve student achievement, and they especially fail students with disabilities, low-income students and rural students,” Laser added. “Vouchers only provide ‘school choice’ for a select few, primarily wealthy families whose children never attended public schools in the first place, and for the private, predominantly religious schools that can pick and choose which students to accept.”
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