We’ve come a long way since the Colorado Supreme Court barred the Douglas County School District in 2015 from giving tuition vouchers to parents who wanted their children to attend a private or parochial school of their choice.

The court had cited a controversial clause in the Colorado Constitution that forbids public funds for schools “controlled by any church or sectarian denomination.” Never mind that it was the parents, not the school district, who would have made the choice and paid the funds.

Had DougCo’s innovative policy been allowed to proceed, most parents in the upscale, well-regarded school district — Colorado’s third-largest — probably would have kept their kids in neighborhood public schools anyway. Yet, some parents who felt their children’s educational needs weren’t being met would have had some meaningful options. The worthy if short-lived effort was an acknowledgment no two children are alike.

The legal landscape looks very different today. U.S. Supreme Court decisions since then appear to have put a stop to such obstructions by Colorado courts — and may pry open the schoolhouse door a bit more to expanded school choice.

The latest ruling along those lines by the nation’s highest court came last week. The court found that state educational programs can’t refuse funding for private schools just because they’re religious — if secular private schools also are eligible for the same programs. A state can’t discriminate against parochial schools, in other words.

The ruling was on a case from Maine, where the state funded a voucher system for parents but only let them use the vouchers at non-religious schools. Practically speaking, of course, most non-public schools that are affordable to middle- and lower-income households tend to be parochial. A program like Maine’s would severely limit parent’s options. Meanwhile, in principle — and to the court’s reasoning — it seems arbitrary to pick and choose which private schools can be eligible for vouchers based on their affiliations, religious or otherwise.

Last week’s court decision follows by two years the high court’s ruling in a similar Montana case — that constitutional clauses like the one used to shoot down DougCo’s voucher program in 2015 are in fact relics of “religious bigotry.” The bar on funding for “sectarian” schools, as enunciated in such clauses, was a veiled reference to Catholic schools and was born of 19th-century prejudice against Catholicism. Yet another U.S. Supreme Court ruling, on a Missouri case in 2017, also curbed the use of such clauses, known as Blaine amendments.

DougCo’s school choice effort ultimately withered on the vine. The school board at the time had appealed the 2015 Colorado Supreme Court ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. Acting on its 2017 ruling in the Missouri case, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Colorado Supreme Court to reconsider the DougCo case. In the interim, however, a new school board majority with a different philosophy was elected in Douglas County and withdrew the appeal.

That, too, has changed. Last fall, voters in Douglas County as well as several other school districts along the Front Range elected pro-reform, pro-school choice boards. Empowered by the U.S. Supreme Court’s removal of some key hurdles to meaningful options like vouchers and tuition tax credits for non-public schools, the new boards are in an enviable position to push the envelope in advancing school choice. Let’s hope they make use of the opportunity.

Denver Gazette editorial board