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American Morning

Interview with Dick Komer

Aired August 06, 2002 - 08:15   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: A is for appeal. That is what Florida Governor Jeb Bush intends to do after a judge ruled that the state's school voucher program is unconstitutional. The judge says that Florida's constitution forbids the use of taxpayer money to send students to religious schools.
Forty-six students already attend private schools under the statewide voucher program, the only one of its kind in the country.

Joining us now from Washington, Attorney Dick Komer with the Institute for Justice, which happens to be representing the Florida families who want school choice.

Good morning to you.

DICK KOMER, INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE: Good morning.

KAGAN: And what is your reaction to this latest court ruling?

KOMER: We're disappointed but we expect and hope that it will be just another temporary setback.

KAGAN: Basically, Mr. Komer, the judge here says it's just flat out obvious. You look at the state constitution of Florida and it says public money, public tax money cannot go to secular -- cannot go to sectarian or church institutions.

KOMER: Yes. This is the third time that we've lost at the trial court level in Florida. And both of the previous times we appealed to the Florida Court of Appeals and the trial judge was reversed. So we're hopeful that we will be equally successful in our appeal of this latest ruling.

KAGAN: Where there was greater success was in the Ohio case, and the Supreme Court ruling in June that it was OK as long as parents there had a choice, not saying that if you don't go to public school, you have to go to a church school, as long as you have a choice to go to, perhaps, a different type of private school. So why is the situation different in Florida?

KOMER: What we, the opponents in these lawsuits always have had two legal strings to their bow. The first was the federal constitution, which the Supreme Court resolved in the Cleveland case this past June. This...

KAGAN: So you would be hopeful on that point.

KOMER: Oh, we know we've won on that point. The other side no longer pursues any federal constitutional claims in this case.

But the state constitutions also contain religion clauses, almost all of them. Some of them are Blain Amendments like what Florida has in its state constitution, and those Blain Amendments have different language than the federal establishment clause. And what the judge did in this case was to rule that the state constitution language is more restrictive than the federal constitutional language.

We think that decision was wrong, both as to the Florida constitution and as to the interaction of the Florida and federal constitutions.

KAGAN: Let me just move this discussion along. A common opponent of these voucher programs tends to be the state teacher unions. And, in fact, we have a comment from the Florida state teachers' union, and that is that they say, "We knew that when a judge looked at it he would side with us. It's absolutely wrong to divert tax money to private schools. Now we can focus on public schools again."

And that's from Marine Dinans (ph) from the Florida Education Association.

A lot of folks think that when you take the money and the people and the resources out of public schools, you're just making the public schools even worse rather than improving them.

KOMER: Florida's opportunity scholarship program is very tightly crafted. You only become eligible for a scholarship after your school has been objectively rated as failing in two out of four of the previous years. So I mean there's no question here that these are the worst schools in the state of Florida. And these kids are being given a lifeboat to get out of demonstrably failing schools.

And of course the teachers' unions oppose these programs, because it threatens their monopoly over public education.

KAGAN: One thing that I find so interesting about this particular political issue, it makes for very interesting bed fellows in that you have parents from minority communities coming together with conservative Republicans and finding that they have a common interest in getting their kids out of those failing schools.

KOMER: That's absolutely right. I mean almost all of our clients in these cases are minority because these programs are means tested and the worst schools are the schools in the minority communities.

KAGAN: Dick, real quickly before we let you go, what's going to happen to the kids who were using the vouchers? School is about to start. The judge says you can't go, can't do it. So where do those kids go to school this year?

KOMER: Well, fortunately under the Florida rules, as soon as a notice of appeal is filed, the judge's order is held in abeyance. It's stayed. So the kids will be able to go to the schools that they've selected under the scholarship program until the appeals are resolved.

KAGAN: We will be tracking it out of Florida. I imagine it will be going through the court system.

Attorney Dick Komer from Florida, thank you so much.

KOMER: Thank you.

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