JACKSON, ma’am. — The Mississippi Supreme Court has declined to rule on whether the state is violating its own constitution with a program that would spend $10 million in state money on infrastructure grants for private schools.
The justices ruled 7-2 on Thursday that an interest group had no legal standing to sue the state. Public school parents “failed to sufficiently demonstrate a negative impact that affects them differently than the general public,” the majority wrote.
Because of that finding, the justices said they would not rule on the broader constitutional issue of public money going to private schools.
In a dissent, Judge Leslie King wrote that Parents for Public Schools has proper legal standing because it represents parents of public school students. King also reiterated the group’s main argument: that Mississippi’s Constitution “prohibits funds from being appropriated to schools that are not free.”
Mississippi’s Republican-controlled Legislature voted to create the $10 million grant program in 2022, using some of the federal money the state received for pandemic relief.
The grants were suspended after the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi and the Mississippi Center for Justice and Democracy Forward sued the state on behalf of Parents for Public Schools in June 2022.
The grants would be funded with some of the money Mississippi received from the federal government for COVID-19 pandemic relief, and private schools could receive up to $100,000 each for broadband, water or drainage projects.
Judge Crystal Wise Martin of the Hinds County Chancery blocked the law in October 2022 after Parents for Public Schools argued that the subsidies would give private schools a competitive advantage over public schools.
Public schools could not apply for the infrastructure grants, under the 2022 law passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.
Lawmakers created a separate program to provide interest-free loans to public schools to improve buildings and other facilities, with money coming from the state. These loans must be repaid within ten years. The subsidies to private schools do not have to be repaid.
Three Supreme Court justices heard arguments on the private school grants in February, and all nine participated in the ruling.