In Sylvania, Ohio, all public school students are transported directly to and from their school with a maximum ride time of about 30 minutes. Students traveling to Sylvania’s St. Joseph Elementary, on the other hand, are picked up in the morning much earlier than their morning bell time, taken with high school students to a high school, transferred to another bus, and then taken to their elementary school.
Plaintiffs, parents of children who attend St. Joseph’s, claim these differences are unlawful under the Equal Protection Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the Ohio Constitution. Defendants, the Sylvania School District, claim that the District bases its plan largely on geography, factoring in the overriding goal of safety for all students. Students attending nonpublic schools are transported to a centralized hub, where they board buses that take them directly to their nonpublic school of choice.
Both parties filed motions for summary judgment. The parents also asked the Court for a permanent injunction, barring the District from continuing the transportation plan and requiring the District to bus their children directly to their schools. Plaintiffs suggested that one way to achieve this goal would be to stop offering bus services to high school students or employ a fleet of school transportation vans to transport nonpublic school students.
Parties seeking an injunction have to show by clear and convincing evidence that they are entitled to relief under applicable statutory law, that an injunction is necessary to prevent irreparable harm, and that no adequate remedy at law exists.
In Ohio, to succeed on an Equal Protection claim, the party challenging the law must prove the law unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt. When legislation infringes upon a fundamental constitutional right or the rights of a suspect class, the law will be evaluated under “strict scrutiny,” the highest standard of review. The presumption under strict scrutiny is that the law is invalid unless the government can show it is narrowly written to serve a compelling state interest.
Here, the Court found that the nonpublic school students were not part of a suspect class and that there is no fundamental right to education. As such, the law was reviewed under “rational basis” review, meaning that so long as the law is rationally related to a legitimate government interest, it would be upheld. Under rational basis review, a court grants substantial deference to the state.
In light of this framework, the Court determined that the government had a legitimate interest in conserving its limited fiscal resources. The Court did not consider whether the District’s plan was the most efficient way to transport public and nonpublic students. Rather, it only considered whether it was rationally related to conserving the District’s fiscal resources. The Court found it reasonable that it was more efficient for the District to have the dispersed nonpublic and community school students, who attend 17 different schools, taken to a central collection point before transporting them to their individual schools. Accordingly, the Court upheld the District’s plan as to the Plaintiffs’ Equal Protection claim.
In order to state a prima facie Free Exercise claim, a plaintiff must show that their religious beliefs are truly held and that the governmental enactment has a coercive affect against their practice of religion.
Here, there was no dispute that Plaintiffs claimed a sincerely held religious belief. At the same time, the Court found no evidence that the Plaintiffs were compelled to do anything forbidden by their religion or that a government action has caused them to refrain from doing something required by their religion. The Plaintiffs chose a Catholic education for their children because of their personal Catholic faith, but the inconveniences of the bus scheme did not require them to affirm or disavow a belief forbidden or required by their religion. Therefore, the Court found the transportation plan did not violate the Plaintiffs’ free exercise of religion. The Court found in favor of the District and dismissed the Plaintiffs’ complaints.
Swiech v. Bd. of Educ. of the Sylvania City Sch. Dist. (Ct.Com.Pl. Mar. 19, 2024) 2024 Ohio Misc. LEXIS 117.