Carolina Journal’s Barry Smith reports on a major development in the legal fight to defend school choice options in our state.

The Institute for Justice has joined the school choice fight in North Carolina.

The Arlington, Va.-based libertarian legal defense group is representing parents of North Carolina children seeking to defend the state’s recently enacted Opportunity Scholarship Program, often referred to as vouchers.

The program will provide scholarships to as many as 2,400 children from low-income families who want to attend a private school. The value of the scholarships, or vouchers, can be as much as $4,200. The first scholarships are scheduled to be awarded March 1 for the 2014-15 school year.

The Institute for Justice has filed lawsuits in more than a dozen states and the District of Columbia over the past two decades on behalf of parents seeking greater educational choice for their children, claiming victories before the U.S. Supreme Court and state Supreme Courts in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Arizona.

The N.C. Association of Educators and the N.C. School Boards Association have filed a lawsuit against the state seeking to prevent the scholarships from being awarded, invalidating the law.

“The teachers’ unions and school boards fear that if low-income families begin to follow their wealthier peers to private schools that offer an education that parents prefer to that of the public schools, the public schools will no longer have a captive clientele and no alternative but to accept the inadequate education offered there,” a “litigation backgrounder” report from the institute says. “Jobs could be lost and the unions could lose income from dues.”

The NCAE filed suit in December against the voucher program, claiming that the N.C. Constitution requires that funds for public education must be used exclusively for public education.

Leftists in this state are seeking to take away choice from these families. It is shameful.