ACLJ Files Brief in Ohio Supreme Court, Urging That School District Stop Violating the Law in Refusing To Transport Students to Christian Schools

We recently filed a major lawsuit at the Ohio Supreme Court on behalf of parents and their right to choose their children’s education. The Columbus City Board of Education is attacking that right by refusing to transport children to private schools, including many Christian schools, despite an Ohio law that expressly requires them to provide that transportation. This past Friday we filed a major reply brief, in the case, to support school choice.

Ohio law requires school districts to provide transportation to all students in their jurisdiction, regardless of what school they attend. When a school district decides that it cannot provide transportation, Ohio law mandates that the school board provide transportation at least as long as a parent is appealing their decision. We explained:

The Columbus School Board has violated that obligation on a large scale, canceling transportation for over 1,000 students. The law requires that a decision be made at least a month before school starts and proper notice given; but for many students and their families, including our client, they did not find out about the decision to stop providing bussing until after the school year began. Imagine the first day of school and your kids are waiting for the bus, and it never comes. Most importantly, the school board has refused to provide any transportation to the families who are appealing its decision despite its mandatory obligation to do so.

Many families have faced irreparable injuries because of the school board’s conduct. This violation of the law has no excuse.

The school board filed a motion to dismiss our case. The law imposes a penalty on school districts that fail to provide the transportation they are required to provide. The school board argues that this penalty is sufficient to address the harms people have experienced. In other words, the school district doesn’t argue that it didn’t violate the law, but that the courts should not address how it violated the law. This penalty is important, but it is not enough to actually fix the injury done here. Every day students and their families are being harmed by the school board’s failure to provide transportation.

In our brief, responding to the school board’s argument, we emphasized that the school board has a mandatory statutory obligation to provide transportation, and the law gives it no excuse to shun its statutory obligation:

This plain statutory language is not optional or in any way subject to the discretion of the School Board. It contains no exception for if the interim transportation is costly or difficult. It instead reflects a basic policy judgment of the Ohio General Assembly; rather than force students to re-obtain their rights to transportation after a potentially lengthy process of mediation and administrative review, suffering all kinds of harms along the way, the General Assembly made clear that if a student challenges a school board’s impracticality determination, the student is immediately entitled to transportation for as long as the dispute resolution lasts.

The law is not a suggestion. It does not contain any exceptions for undue expense for the school district or provide the school district with an alternative of financial compensation rather than transport children. We have urged the Ohio Supreme Court to recognize that there is no exception to the school board’s duty and to order the required transportation to be provided.

This is not just about transportation – it’s about the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children without undue government interference. The Columbus School District has chosen to violate the law as a “cheaper” option than doing what the law mandates. We will be waiting for the Ohio Supreme Court to reach a decision. With your support, we are prepared to continue this fight to protect school choice.