Chittenden parents file lawsuit challenging Vermont’s new public tuition rules

Two Chittenden parents are suing the Vermont Agency of Education in federal court, alleging Vermont illegally excludes religious schools from being eligible for the state’s public tuition program for private schools. 

The lawsuit, filed by Carrie and Greg Bishop, alleges that the requirements for private schools to receive public tuition dollars under Vermont’s 2025 education reform law “create a de facto religious exclusion” that violates the First Amendment. 

“They’re not receiving equal treatment, yet they deserve equal access to public funding alongside other families in the state,” said Jacob Reed, the lawyer representing the Bishop family, in an interview. Reed works for Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal organization based in Arizona that is increasingly involved in state politics and has previously challenged the constitutionality of Vermont’s public tuition program.  

The Bishop family alleges they’re experiencing religious discrimination. And their lawsuit isn’t the first of its kind. 

Toren Ballard, a spokesperson for the state Agency of Education, declined to comment on the ongoing case. The Vermont Attorney General’s Office is representing the agency in the suit, he said. 

Some rural school districts in Vermont lack public schools for all grades. Through the state’s public tuition system, families can send their kids to private schools or public schools in another district on the public dime. About 3,500 kids in Vermont received public tuition as of 2024, according to the education agency. 

Private religious schools were formerly included in the program and saw an influx of public dollars in recent years. But that practice ended in 2025 when the state passed a wide ranging education reform law, Act 73, that created new qualifications for private schools to be included in the tuition program. 

To qualify under the new law, a school had to be in a district that doesn’t operate a public school for some or all grade levels and at least 25% of their student body from the 2023-24 school year had to be funded by a Vermont public school district. 

After the passage of Act 73, only 18 private schools — none of which is religious — qualified for the public tuition program.

While Act 73 eliminated all religious schools from the tuition program, it eliminated an even larger number of secular schools, according to court documents from a previous lawsuit challenging the law. Eighteen secular schools were eliminated from the program, while 15 Catholic and Christian schools were eliminated. 

“The idea is to have, frankly, as many Vermont kids under the roof of Vermont’s public schools as possible, in order to have that scale and reduce our-per pupil costs,” said Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, who chairs the House Education Committee and helped craft Act 73. 

The tuition program exists, Conlon said, because lawmakers recognize that public schools aren’t easily accessible in some parts of the state. 

But Reed sees things differently. 

“What is happening here is people of faith are essentially being treated as second-class citizens,” said Reed, who specializes in representing Christian ministries and religious schools in First Amendment cases.

Courts in Vermont  and around the country have long grappled with the legality of excluding religious schools from receiving public tuition. 

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark 2022 decision in Carson v. Makin, ruling that Maine’s public tuition program, which is similar to Vermont’s, couldn’t deny funds to some parents based on how they exercise their religion. The decision reverberated through Vermont and opened up more public tuition funds for religious schools — until the 2025 law went into effect. 

Alliance Defending Freedom has filed at least five lawsuits challenging Vermont’s public tuition system, although not all of them address the state’s 2025 law, according to Reed. The firm also represented the Mid Vermont Christian School, which sued the state in 2023 after it was banned from participating in state athletics because it forfeited against a team with a transgender player. 

A federal appeals court ruled in the school’s favor in September 2025 and said its teams must be allowed to participate, but returned the case to the lower court for further action. Last year the school also filed a new legal lawsuit challenging Act 73. A decision in the case is still pending, Reed said. 

The Bishops’ legal challenge explains why they allege religious discrimination. 

“Public schools teach evolution, which conflicts with the Bishops’ religious teachings that God created the universe in seven days,” the lawsuit said. The lawsuit also said that the Bishops’ older sons “faced backlash and scrutiny” for bringing their bibles to public school with them. 

The family lives in the Barstow Unified Union School District, which only has public schools through eighth grade. Rather than sending their daughters to public schools through the tuition program like they did with their sons, the couple wanted to send their daughters to a religious school. 

The couple decided to send their daughters to Mount St. Joseph Academy, a Catholic school in Rutland, according to the lawsuit. The private school doesn’t qualify for the state’s tuition program because it’s within a district that has a public high school, according to the lawsuit. 

The Bishops, in their lawsuit, are asking their school district to pay for one of their daughters, who is a senior in high school, to attend the Catholic school and to allow her participation in the state’s dual enrollment program, which offers high schoolers college courses free of cost. Students in private schools only qualify for dual enrollment if they receive public tuition. 

The complaint names Vermont Education Secretary Zoie Saunders, as well as the State Board of Education and the Barstow Unified Union School District, as defendants. 

“Religious families want to be treated equal. They sue. They get in, and then Vermont changes the law or does some sort of work around to exclude them again. And obviously, that’s unconstitutional,” Reed said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Chittenden parents file lawsuit challenging Vermont’s new public tuition rules.