An Indiana judge refused to halt the state's new voucher program, concluding that new statutory provisions guaranteeing publicly funded choice of even parochial schools are "religion-neutral" and "for the benefit" of students, not churches. It is a conclusion wholly different from one ruling issued Friday in Colorado, where a district judge weighed similar arguments challenging a Douglas County voucher plan and found that the same choice provided "no meaningful limitations on the use of taxpayer funds to support or promote religion."

From Indiana Superior Court Judge Michael Keele:

The [scholarship program] is religion-neutral and was enacted 'for the benefit' of students, not religious institutions or activities ... It permits taxpayer funds to be paid to religious schools only upon the private, individual choices of parents ...

... [The plaintiffs] would thus threaten long-established, and apparently unquestioned, Indiana traditions of permitting tax dollars to be spent on religious education by way of private, individual choice.

From Colorado District Judge Michael A. Martinez on the Douglas County ruling:

Because the scholarship aid is available to students attending elementary and secondary institutions, and because the religious Private School Partners infuse religious tenets into their educational curriculum, any funds provided to the schools, even if strictly limited to the cost of education, will result in the impermissible aid to Private School Partners to further their missions of religious indoctrination to purportedly 'pubic' school students.

A judge in Colorado on Friday blocked the Douglas County school district's voucher experiment, insisting that allowing the program to move forward will lead to "real, immediate, and irreparable injury" to the plaintiffs and others who asked for the injunction.

Specifically, Judge Michael A. Martinez wrote in a 68-page ruling that the program provides aid to churches and faith-based schools and ignores safeguards that would ensure no public school funding would promote a participating school's "sectarian agenda." Further, Martinez said, there is "overwhelming evidence" to show that the voucher program violates Colorado's constitutional provisions which call for "uniform" funding of public education across the state.

Interestingly, Martinez wasn't persuaded by the ACLU's argument that the program also violated the constitutional demand for a thorough and uniform "system of free public education." A similar uniformity clause sunk the private school option in Florida's Opportunity Scholarship Program in 2006. Martinez, though, said the plaintiffs failed to show that the scholarship program prevented students "from otherwise obtaining a free public education in Douglas County."

Maddeningly, the judge acknowledged that the scholarship program "appears to be a well-intentioned effort to assist students in Douglas County," further stating that he agrees that the purpose of the school district was to help students and parents, "not sectarian institutions." The U.S. Supreme Court said the same when it came to a wholly different conclusion in the challenge to Cleveland's voucher program.