Ohio’s EdChoice voucher programme has been declared unconstitutional by an appeals court, in a ruling that found public money was being used to support a separate system of private schools while the state’s public education system remained underfunded.
The decision, issued by the Tenth District Court of Appeals on 15 October, upheld a lower-court judgment from June 2025. The ruling is suspended while Ohio appeals to its Supreme Court, meaning families currently using the vouchers will see no immediate change.
Attorney General Andy Wilson said the programme would continue without interruption as the state seeks a further review of the case.
Why the Ohio EdChoice programme was challenged
EdChoice was launched in 2006 after being created the previous year to help pupils assigned to persistently underperforming public schools attend private schools with state-funded tuition assistance.
Lawmakers later introduced EdChoice Expansion, initially allowing eligible children in kindergarten to receive scholarships regardless of their local school’s performance if their families were on low incomes. Eligibility was subsequently extended to additional year groups.
In 2023, Republican lawmakers removed the income limit. Families earning up to 450% of the federal poverty guidelines – about $135,000 for a family of four at the time – could receive full scholarships, while higher-earning households could qualify for smaller awards.
The legal challenge began in January 2022, when six public school districts, four pupils and the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding sued the state.
They argued that EdChoice breached Ohio’s constitutional obligation to maintain a “thorough and efficient system of common schools”. A Franklin County judge agreed last year, prompting the state’s unsuccessful appeal.
Judges cite admissions and funding concerns
The appeals court said private schools receiving vouchers could decide which pupils to admit, while public schools remained responsible for educating eligible children in their districts regardless of the cost of their needs.
It cited admission policies allowing private schools to reject pupils with behavioural difficulties, disabilities or weak academic performance.
The judges said public districts could lose state funding when pupils left, even though their fixed costs remained. Buildings still required upkeep, buses still had to operate and teachers still had to be paid.
The court also said private schools enrolling children who were less expensive to educate could leave public schools with a larger proportion of pupils requiring costly support.
It found that access to EdChoice was uneven across rural Ohio. Of the 154 private schools where at least three-quarters of pupils used vouchers, 44% were located in Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton counties, which include Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.
Ohio spent about $776 million on its two EdChoice programmes in the 2025 financial year. The total included $492.7 million for EdChoice Expansion scholarships and $283.1 million for traditional EdChoice scholarships, covering more than 140,000 pupils.
At the same time, the court found that public schools were not receiving the full amount set out in the state’s own funding formula. They received about $7.1 billion in state funding in the 2024 financial year, approximately $700 million less than the $7.8 billion the formula indicated.
That year, Ohio spent $677.6 million on EdChoice vouchers. The court noted that voucher payments and public-school funding came from the same budget line.
Aaron Rausch, chief of budget and school funding at the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, told the court that money no longer directed to private schools could instead be returned to public education.
The judges acknowledged that the shortfall could not be attributed entirely to EdChoice because the funding formula had been intended to be phased in over several years. However, they concluded that the phase-in had “by all meaningful measures, been abandoned” and that voucher spending was competing with money that could support public schools.
Marnisha Brown, superintendent of Richmond Heights Local School District outside Cleveland, described the pressure facing one of the districts involved in the case. She said it could not afford to repair a broken elementary-school boiler and heating pumps, offer competitive teacher salaries or provide programmes including band, art, music, drama and foreign languages.
The district had also failed to secure voter approval for a school levy. The court did not find that EdChoice alone caused those difficulties, but cited them as an illustration of the financial strain on public schools.
Expansion scholarships and pupils outside public schools
The court also considered who was benefiting from the expanded voucher scheme. Of about 25,700 first-time EdChoice Expansion recipients in the 2025 financial year, only roughly 6,100 – 24% – had attended a public school in Ohio the previous year.
The remaining three-quarters had not come from an Ohio public school, according to the state’s Legislative Service Commission. The figures suggested that the programme was funding private-school places for many children who had not been leaving the public system.
Democratic state Senator Willis E Blackshear Jr, of Dayton, described the ruling as “a major step in the right direction”. He criticised increasing spending on private-school scholarships while public districts struggled to meet their costs.
“Ohio students deserve an educational environment that benefits all, not some, and this cannot be a reality as long as we are spending public tax dollars on exclusionary, often for-profit, private schools while our public schools suffer the financial burden,” he said.
Troy McIntosh, executive director of the Ohio Christian Education Network, said the judgment was “an egregious example of judicial overreach”.
“Ohio is facing a severe educational crisis, with two-thirds of public school eighth graders failing to achieve reading proficiency and three-quarters falling short in mathematics,” he said. “The loss of EdChoice would threaten to strip away one of the most effective tools created by elected leaders to reform and improve Ohio’s education system.”
Mr Wilson rejected the conclusion that the programme harmed public education, saying: “The current system does not hurt our public schools.” He argued that families should be free to decide where to send their children.
The vouchers will remain available while the state seeks review by the Ohio Supreme Court. Parents can choose where to apply, while private schools retain the power to decide which pupils they admit.
