University of Minnesota Law School Scholarship Repository Constitutional Commentary 2000 Brown's Promise, Blaine's Legacy: A Review Essay Of: Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution, and Civil Society. Joseph P. Viteritti Richard W. Garnet Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/concomm Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Garnet, Richard W., "Brown's Promise, Blaine's Legacy: A Review Essay Of: Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution, and Civil Society. Joseph P. Viteritti" (2000). Constitutional Commentary. 895. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/concomm/895 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Minnesota Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Constitutional Commentary collection by an authorized administrator of the Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BROWN'S PROMISE, BLAINE'S LEGACY CHOOSING EQUALITY: SCHOOL CHOICE, THE CONSTITUTION, AND CIVIL SOCIETY. By Joseph P. Viteritti.1 Brookings Institution Press. 1999. Pp. 284. $29.95. Richard W. Garnetr If nothing else, this Review Essay, like Professor Viteritti's book, should be timely. As I write, the United States Supreme Court in Mitchell v. Helms3 has just decided that publicly funded computers and other educational materials may be loaned to private and religious schools. The decision is widely viewed as signaling, if not determining, the constitutional fate of school­ choice experiments like those in Cleveland and Milwaukee.4 As it happened, just one week before Mitchell, the Sixth Circuit heard oral arguments in Simmons-Harris v. Zelman 5 (the Ohio voucher case) as hundreds of voucher supporters chanted "free­ dom, freedom!" across the street from the federal court in down­ town Cincinnati.6 A challenge to Florida's statewide voucher I. Research Professor of Public Administration, Wagner School of Public Service, New York University. 2. Assistant Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School. I'm grateful to Brendan Gardiner and Fred Marczyk for their assistance with this and other projects, and to Gerard Bradley, James Dwyer, Nicole Garnett, Steffen Johnson, William Kelley, John Nagle, Michael Paulsen, Steven Smith, and Eugene Yolokh for their comments and criti­ cisms. Richard Garnett can be contacted at <[email protected]>. 3. 530 U.S. 793 (2000). 4. See, e.g., Jodi Wilgoren, Court Ruling Fuels Debate on Vouchers for Education, N.Y. Times A21 (June 29, 2000); Chester E. Finn, Jr., and Charles R. Hokanson, Jr., Court Ruling Augurs Well for Vouchers, Wall. St. J. A26 (June 29, 2000). 5. The author of this Review Essay helped write the amicus curiae brief filed by the Center for Education Reform in support of the Cleveland choice program. 6. Francis Griggs and Sharon Moloney, While Lawyers Arguing, Rally Touts School Choice, Cin. Post 7A (June 21, 2000). In Zelman, Ohio is asking the Court of Appeals to reverse a district-court ruling that the Ohio Pilot Scholarship Program vio­ lates the Establishment Clause. See Simmons-Harris v. Zelman, 72 F. Supp. 2d 834 (N.D. Ohio 1999). Just before this Essay went to press, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmt:d the decision in Zelman, reasoning that the Cleveland school­ choice program "has the primary effect of advancing religion and that it constitutes an endorsement of religion and sectarian education in violation of the Establishment 651 652 CONSTITUTIONAL COMMENTARY [Vol.17:651 program is pending before a state appeals court, and choice pro­ posals will be on the ballot this November in Michigan and Cali­ fornia.7 It is, one activist reports, "High Noon" for vouchers. 8 Enter Joseph Viteritti (cue spaghetti-western-style, ominously poignant whistling), who has written a readable and reasonable, measured yet inspiring, argument for educational choice.9 I "Vouchers" is, for many liberals and progressives, a dirty word; such a nasty word, in fact, that when the Vice President and his campaign staff were making the talk-show rounds last winter to critique Senator Bradley's health-care plan, they were careful to note, over and again, their horror barely concealed, that Bradley was proposing "vouchers." 10 What's more-as was illustrated last February during the Bradley-Gore debate at the Apollo Theater-it is evidently thought to be politically safer to risk snubbing the many African American parents who favor school choice than even to appear sympathetic to voucher pro­ posals.11 Clause.'' Simmons-Harris v. Zelman, 234 F.3d 945, 961 (6th Cir. 2000). In my view, the Sixth Circuit's ruling coheres neither with controlling precedent nor common sense, and should he reviewed and reversed hy the United States Supreme Court. Sec, e.g., Judg­ mem Day, Wash. Post A26 (Dec. 18, 2000) ('The good news is that no one, least of all the court itself, really expects this to be the last word"'). 7. Editorial, School is Out, Wall St. J. A46 (June 26, 2000). As this Essay is going to press, the protracted 2000 presidential election has finally ended, and voters in Michi­ gan and California resoundingly rejected the school-choice initiatives proposed in those states. See, e.g., Voters Approved School-Funding Proposals in Referendum Voting, Wall St. J. A17 (Nov. 9, 2000) ("By more than 3-to-1, ... voters in California and Michigan turned down proposals that would have committed their states to offering school vouch­ ers"'). 8. Ron Unz, High Noon for Vouchers, Nat'! Rev. Online, June 20, 2000 ("Now, suddenly, a chain of unconnected events will decide the triumph or collapse of the voucher movement-by the end of the year") (sec <http://www.nationalrcvicw.com> ). 9. Professor Viteritti has developed these ideas in earlier works. Sec generally Joseph P. Vitcritti, Reaching For Equality: The Salience of School Choice, 14 J.L. & Pol. 469 (1998); Joseph P. Vitcritti, Blaine's Wake: School Choice, The First Amendment, and State Constitutional Law, 21 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol. 657 (1998); Joseph P. Viteritti, Choos­ ing Equality: Religious Freedom and Educational Opportunity Under Constitutional Fed­ eralism, 15 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 113 (1996). 10. Debra J. Saunders, Gore Masters Psychological Warfare, S.F. Chron. A25 (Jan. 28, 1999) ("In debate after debate, Gore hit Bradley's 'voucher' plan that was 'capped' at $150 per month. It was a double misrepresentation. The Bradley plan would operate through tax credits, not vouchers-a loaded word among Democrats who might hear the word and think school vouchers"). 11. During the Apollo Theater debate, one journalist asked the Vice President, given that so many African Americans support school choice and that the Vice President and his childn:n arc products of private schools, "why should ... parents [who support vouchers] have to keep their kids in public schools because they don't have the financial 2000] BROWN'S PROMISE, BLAINE'S LEGACY 653 This makes no sense to Joseph Viteritti, an "old school" lib­ eral who offers in Choosing Equality what some might call a "bleeding heart" argument for choice in education. The book opens not with a libertarian nugget from Hayek or the Cato In­ stitute; and not with red-meat-for-conservatives anecdotes about mandatory condom-distribution programs, Gaia worship, or public-school secularism run amok; but instead with the story of Linda Brown: "Nearly half a century has passed since the par­ ents of a little black girl from Topeka, Kansas, entered a federal court room to argue that every child in America has an equal right to a decent education." (p. 1) Still, "[ n ]otwithstanding Linda Brown's courageous efforts to fulfill the promise of equal­ ity and a range of well-intentioned government actions, race and class remain the most reliable predictors of educational achievement in the United States." (Id.) This, Viteritti insists, is the "most compelling argument" for school choice. (p. 223) Viteritti admits, of course, that there are many reasons why people support (and oppose) school choice. 12 When Milton Friedman first proposed a "full-fledged system of school vouch­ ers" that "would minimize the role of government in education and replace public schools with privately run institutions sup­ ported bl taxes," (p. 53) many libertarians cheered, and many still do. 1 In the early 1970s, progressive social scientists like Christopher Jencks, John Coons, and Stephen Sugarman turned to vouchers as an income-redistribution and empowerment de­ vice, 14 themes that many education-reform and civil-rights activ­ ists still invoke today. 15 And more recently, many religious con­ servatives have embraced school choice as a way to challenge resources that you do?" Another questioner inquired of both candidates, why shouldn't parents conclude that the Democratic Party's opposition to choice is supporting a special interest rather than their interest''" Both candidates were unmoved. See Editorial, No Choice for Democrats, Wall St. J. A22 (Feb. 23, 2000); sec also Floyd H. Flake, Gore's Achilles Heel, N.Y. Times A15 (Mar. 12, 2000) (claiming that ··Mr. Gore did not answer [the] question in any real way. That won't do"). 12. For a fairly representative snapshot of the debate. sec Gary Rosen, Are School Vouchers Un-American 7 , Commentary 26, Feb. 2000; Gary Rosen & Critics, Are School Vouchers the Answer?, Commcntarv 16. June 2000. 13. Milton Friedman, The Rot~ of Gm-ernmem in Education, in Robert A. Solo, ed., Economics and the Public Interest (Greenwood Press. 1'!55). 14. Sec, e.g., Christopher Jencks, Education Vouchers: A Report on Financing Edu­ cation by Payments to Parents (1970); John E. Coons, William H. Clune and Stephen D. Sugarman, Private Wealth and Public Education (Belknap Press. I 970); John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman, Family Choice in Education: A l'vfode/ Stare System for Vouchers, 59 Cal.