State officials in West Virginia are racing the clock in an effort to resolve litigation over one of the country’s most ambitious school choice programs before the school year begins.

The drama is growing more tense after a state appeals court refused to stay an injunction halting the state’s new Hope Scholarship Program only weeks before school begins in districts across the state.

The injunction was issued by a county circuit judge, who ruled that the program violated West Virginia’s constitution.

More than 3,000 students had been approved for the Hope Scholarship Program when Judge Joanna Tabit slammed the breaks on it. The program would have offered these students — and their families — $4,300 each to spend on education-related costs.

Judge Tabit ruled that the state did not have the authority to create such a program because it contradicts the state constitutional mandate to fund “a thorough and efficient system” of public schools. 

The petitioners, two public school parents and a public school teacher, argued that halting the program was “absolutely essential to protect the state’s students and their public schools.”  

“We are hopeful the WV Supreme Court will view this case differently,” the state’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, tweeted. “The plaintiffs’ arguments are not particularly strong — the Hope Scholarship is constitutional.”

The appeal is one of the first rulings coming out of West Virginia’s new Intermediate Court, made up of three judges.

The stay was denied in a 2-to-1 decision, with the deciding vote cast by a district judge sitting on temporary assignment. The chief justice of the new court, Daniel Greear, recused himself from the case because he had served as counsel to one of the legislators named in the lawsuit.

The case will likely go to the West Virginia Supreme Court, which will rule definitively whether the state’s constitution provides for school choice programs.