Suing To Eliminate All Public School

This lawsuit popped up on my radar a few days ago and I let it sit, thinking foolishly that maybe I was reading too much into it. But a Washington Post op-ed from Corey DeAngelis confirmed the worst-- privatizers are ready to try to eliminate public schools entirely. 

The New Civil Liberties Alliance has filed a lawsuit arguing that "Nebraska’s Educational Scheme Violates Parents’ Free Speech."  And by "scheme" they mean "public education system." Here's their argument for why public education is a violation of the First Amendment. 

Education is speech. The curriculum taught, the books assigned, and the values reinforced inside (and outside) of the classroom all convey a message. The Constitution has long recognized that parents—not the government—hold the paramount right to direct that message for their own children.

That's part of the argument. The rest is familiar as well.

Parents also have a legal duty to provide or arrange for educational speech.

In other words, I should not have to pay for a system that educates Other Peoples' Children. Their children are their problem.  

Nor is the suit merely about eliminating the public system. 

Nebraska’s scheme flips free speech on its head, mandating educational speech then penalizing viewpoints other than the government’s: parents who wish to exercise their right, whether by homeschooling or by choosing a private school, must forgo tens of thousands of dollars of educational benefits available to other families who acquiesce to the government’s viewpoints.

In other words, I should not have to pay for Other Peoples' Children to get an education, but taxpayers should absolutely help me subsidize the education of my own children.

I didn't read the DeAngelis op-ed because the presence of his op-ed in the Washington Post is precisely why I don't have a subscription to the Post any more. But I'm sure it's plenty incendiary and rage-baity. The very idea that public education violates the First Amendment is so destructive and counter-intelligent, but that appears to be where they want to go. The whole system is unconstitutional. 

Update: Okay, someone shared it with me. He used his big boy voice for the Post, but it's still an astonishing reach. "Universal school choice resolves the constitutional problem while preserving public support for education," he writes. Tear down public schools, end the promise to all students, and open up the unregulated free market. In many ways, I suppose this whole business is just the quiet part out loud-- this has always been the goal for some of these folks all the way back to Milton Friedman. 

The New Civil Liberties Alliance is one more dark money group from the usual gang of reactionary billionaires like Charles Koch and Leonard Leo. They are not bush league-- they helped take Chevron to court.

The libertarian Reason magazine is taking this seriously, which is not surprising. NCLA says that "Plaintiffs do not seek to end, defund, or influence public schools," and that's pretty clearly bullshit. What other effect can we expect from ruling the entire system unconstitutional? Maybe the idea is simple extortion-- give us a pile of money or we'll tear down your schools-- but the effect would be the same. Who knows how Nebraska's court will jump on this, and there's a whole counter-argument to be made that education (as folks on the right love to point out) is no business of the federal government; public education is a feature of state constitutions.

So it's easy to look at this suit and argue that it will likely fail. That's not really the point; folks on the far right have always been willing to play a long game and make legal and policy moves that slowly inch the Overton window over and move into courts until, voila! We get Dobbs.

So I'm watching this as the next front of the ongoing attack on public schools, the new argument that will be repeated ad nauseum. Pay attention, folks.