Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed Bishop v. Saunders on behalf of a North Chittenden family whose daughter attends a private Catholic academy. Legal counsel Jake Reed says a new state law, Act 73, bypasses past court rulings by cutting off religious schools from public tuition benefits.
Signed in July 2025, the act established new eligibility requirements for private schools receiving public tuition funds, including location, minimum class sizes and a requirement that at least 25% of enrollment have received public funding during the 2023-24 school year.
"Once states decide to open that door to fund private education, they cannot exclude religious schools and the religious families that want to go to those schools from participation," Reed insists. "That's exactly what Vermont's doing here. They're just doing it a new way. They're trying to work around those Supreme Court and Second Circuit decisions."
Those decisions include the Second Circuit's A.H. v. French (2021) and the Supreme Court's Trinity Lutheran v. Comer (2017), Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020) and Carson v. Makin (2022), which prohibit states from excluding religious schools from publicly funded education programs.
The Carson decision is particularly relevant to the Bishops' case because it involved a tuition assistance program similar to Vermont's.
AFN has previously reported on several similar disputes, including the A.H. v. French ruling that allowed Vermont families to use public tuition benefits at religious schools. AFN also covered Georgia's settlement after a religious seminary challenged its exclusion from a state financial aid program, as well as disputes involving Mid Vermont Christian School and LifeWise Academy.
Across these cases, religious organizations and families have challenged government policies they argue deny them access to public benefits because of their religious beliefs or practices.
In the Bishop family's case, the denial of Town Tuition funding also bars their daughter, a high school senior, from participating in Vermont's Dual Enrollment Program for college courses. The lawsuit argues that Vermont is circumventing previous court rulings by imposing new eligibility requirements that disqualify religious schools while allowing secular private schools to participate.
ADF plans to request a preliminary injunction within two weeks, hoping for a court ruling before the end of the year.
"Parents, families across the country should care because they have the fundamental right to control the upbringing of their children," Reed says. "That's the religious upbringing, and that pertains to the educational upbringing of their children too."
He reiterates that when the state opens the door to fund private education, "it can't slam that door shut on the religious families that want to go to religious schools."
State officials have not yet filed a formal response in federal court.
