Montana Free Press

A district court judge on Monday blocked Montana’s education savings account program for students with disabilities, ruling in favor of two Montana nonprofits that claimed that lawmakers did not fund the program when they created it. House Bill 393, the Students with Special Needs Equal Opportunity Act, passed by lawmakers in 2023, created Montana’s first education savings account (ESA) program. It allows parents of students with disabilities to redirect their child’s per-pupil school funding that normally goes to a public school district into an account administered by the Office of Public Instruction, the state agency that oversees K-12 schools.

The lawsuit was filed by two Montana nonprofits, the Montana Quality Education Coalition and Disability Rights Montana. They maintained that the bill required families to waive significant educational rights in exchange for funding that often would not cover basic needs. It was against the state, governor, OPI, the state superintendent of public instruction, and the lawmaker who carried the bill. In a press release Tuesday, MQEC Executive Director Doug Reisig said that “taking money from public schools for vouchers without clear limits on how much and where that money will be spent is unconstitutional, pure and simple.” Tal Goldin, advocacy director for Disability Rights Montana, added, “HB 393 was a lose-lose for students with disabilities.”