It’s becoming harder for opponents of education freedom to come up with legitimate reasons families should not have more options when deciding the best possible education options for their children. The U.S. Supreme Court made it more difficult with a pair of recent rulings, including one that said denying approximately 500 families in Douglas County the ability to exercise that freedom was wrong.

The ruling brings new hope for these families after the lower court’s decision was ruled unconstitutional.

But even with these rulings and public opinion polls showing strong support for educational freedom, opponents are determined to turn back the tide.

Before their setback at the Supreme Court, opponents had been relying on a pernicious anti-Catholic relic of the 19th century known as the Blaine Amendment, named after the Maine senator who encouraged states to include language in their state constitutions to deny public funding for parochial schools. Today, defenders of the educational status quo repeatedly cite the Blaine Amendment to justify denying low-income and minority families greater educational freedom.

It’s essentially the same argument plaintiffs in Colorado and Missouri made. In the case of Missouri, plaintiffs tried to convince the Supreme Court that they were right to deny public funding for a religious nonprofit that was looking to improve the safety of its preschool playground.

In both of these cases, the Supreme Court was unpersuaded by reliance on state Blaine Amendments.

Still, the Supreme Court did not endorse the Douglas County scholarship program outright. Instead, the case was sent back to the Colorado Supreme Court for further examination.

But even with the mere possibility that the Colorado Supreme Court could find the state’s scholarship program constitutional, powerful special interest groups are not taking any chances. They are prepared to spend the next few weeks misleading the people of Douglas County into believing that empowering families is a threat to our educational system.

In fact, the opposite is true. Years of research has shown that the entire educational system benefits when parents and families have options. One study, conducted by Stanford University, found that students attending public charter schools are receiving additional days of learning over their peers in traditional public schools and helping to close the academic gap.

Besides academic gains, surveys also show that private and charter school parents are more satisfied with their children’s schooling than parents whose children attend traditional public schools.

Success stories like this are happening in Colorado. Jordan Smith, a fifth-grader at the Golden View Classical Academy, a charter school in Golden, told The Denver Post how happy she is about her new school, but wishes that other classmates would have the same opportunities that she and her family have been able to enjoy.

We could not agree more with Jordan and the thousands of families and students in Colorado seeking the best educational options. This is why the Colorado Chapter for Americans for Prosperity, the state’s leading grassroots advocacy group for educational options, is refusing to sit on the sidelines as the fate of the Douglas County scholarship program hangs in the balance.

To make our case, we are planning to tell them that no child’s chance for a bright future should be decided by their current ZIP code or parents’ income.

To be sure, our fight is not against the public-school system. For some families in Douglas County and elsewhere, the traditional system works great. Our fight is about expanding – not limiting – educational freedom for families in Douglas County and across Colorado.