Tennessee’s two biggest cities are angling to block a beleaguered voucher program just days before the academic year begins.

The pilot program was signed into law two years ago but has yet to see the light of day. The main impediment has been the choice of locales for the initial program: Memphis and Nashville, neither of which are on board with it.

The two liberal cities have gone to war with the state’s Republican leadership in state courts. For the past two years, their campaign to smother the program in court has been successful.

An injunction had blocked the program from launching for two years, but in mid-July the state supreme court overturned that injunction. Now, the cities are trying yet again even though school is scheduled to start next week in Nashville.

More than 2,000 students have enrolled in the new education savings account program since the injunction was lifted. Students in low- and middle-income families will be eligible for more than $7,000 to put toward education programs outside the public school system.

The pilot program is rolling out with a cap of 5,000 student participants in its first year.

The municipal governments of the two cities first sued the state in 2020, accusing it of selecting them for the pilot program without their consent. 

Lower courts ruled that the program violated the Home Rule Amendment in the state’s constitution, which makes it illegal for the legislature to change municipal charters.

“We, of course, do not feel that vouchers are a solution for improving public education,” the mayor of Nashville, John Cooper, said at the time. The state supreme court ultimately ruled that the program did not violate the Home Rule Amendment and overturned the injunction.

In new filings following the ruling, the two counties argue that the education savings account program “unconstitutionally imposes a school voucher-type program in only two Tennessee school districts — at the financial expense of the counties that fund them and at the educational expense of the districts and the students that remain in them.”

At stake now is whether the state can provide for non-public schools while fulfilling its mandate to “provide for the maintenance, support and eligibility standards of a system of free public schools” spelled out in the state constitution.

The plaintiffs also argue that the injunction is a matter of “public interest” because the program “siphons … millions of education dollars from the districts.”

A few hours’ drive north, West Virginia’s new Hope Scholarship Program is facing a similar constitutional challenge. A district judge enjoined the program after ruling that it violated the state’s constitutional mandate to provide for public schools.