Families sue Nevada to thaw state Democrats' freeze on school choice scholarships

Several Nevada parents are suing the state over growth caps imposed on a heavily politicized, privately-funded school choice initiative.

The Opportunity Scholarship program, launched in 2015 under a Republican-controlled Legislature, was supposed to offer ever-increasing amount of tax credits to businesses that support private school scholarships for low-income students. 

But a Democrat-dominated Legislature in June decided to sharply limit the program’s growth with a bill that school choice advocates said would prevent hundreds of families from accessing the scholarships. 

Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson, D-Las Vegas, has defended the move by saying it would be “simply unsustainable” to continue funding the voucher-like school choice initiative, which has long been opposed by public teachers unions and Democratic legislators.

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The fight goes to court

Now, some of the families already enrolled in the program are fighting back in court. The complaint was filed Thursday in Clark County District Court.

They argue that by staunching the flow of credits to companies that fund scholarships, legislative Democrats unlawfully grew state coffers to the tune of around $2 million — and did so without the two-thirds supermajority vote normally required to raise revenue under the state constitution.

“Nevada’s legislature ignored the state’s constitution when it eliminated the tax credits that spur funding for scholarships for low-income families,” attorney Joshua House said in a Thursday statement announcing the suit. “The Nevada Constitution clearly requires two-thirds support in the House and Senate for any revenue-raising measure.

"The families harmed by this unconstitutional law are today asking the courts to restore the tax credits so that scholarship organizations can confidently renew scholarships to qualified students.”

The Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based, libertarian public interest law firm, helped file the suit on behalf of families, businesses and scholarship organizations involved in the Opportunity Scholarship program.

Meanwhile, another lawsuit following 2019 Legislature

Those plaintiffs aren’t the only ones who have recently accused the Legislature of breaking the Silver State’s strict tax hike rules.

State Senate Republicans last month filed suit over a divisive revenue-raising maneuver used to balance Nevada’s budget without GOP input. 

That filing arrived more than two months after outnumbered legislative Republicans first vowed to challenge Democrats’ decision to extend a payroll tax that had been set to sunset in July.

GOP lawmakers have long argued the move was unlawful under the state constitutional provision that requires a two-thirds majority vote for any measure that “creates, generates, or increases any public revenue.”

Democrats, who remain a single vote shy of a supermajority in the state Senate, pushed ahead anyway, pointing to a May opinion from legislative attorneys that said the tax could be extended with a simple majority vote.

The state Departments of Taxation and Education are both named as defendants in the Opportunity Scholarship suit. A spokesman for state Superintendent Jhone Ebert declined to comment on pending litigation. A tax department spokeswoman did not immediately return requests for comment on the suit. 

Read the full filing below:

James DeHaven is the politics reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal. He covers campaigns, the Nevada Legislature and everything in between. Support his work by subscribing to RGJ.com right here.