This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Last week's victory for educational freedom in New Hampshire came at a critical time as other states now face

challenges to popular school choice regimes. Jason Bedrick helped craft that

reform that was upheld last week in New Hampshire.

He talks about some of the current challenges

to educational freedom.

The Supreme Court in New Hampshire

tossed out a petition to essentially shut down their scholarship tax credit program for students

educations but another program in Oklahoma had a strikingly different result.

What was that case about and what's the difference?

Yes, both laws were challenged under each state's historically anti-Catholic Blaine amendment

which says that public dollars cannot be used to fund private religious schools.

Now that came from a state senator in Maine

who in the late 1800s was a part of the no-nothing party

and was pushing to make sure that Catholics

couldn't receive public funding for their schools while of course the public

schools were essentially non-denominational Protestant and they were teaching the Bible in a manner

that Protestants from numerous denominations would be happy with and Catholics would not be happy with.

The difference between the two cases is that Oklahoma has a voucher law.

Their voucher law is for low, actually it's for special needs students to attend the school of their choice using public funds.

And so the Oklahoma judge found that the voucher law violated the state's blame amendment and that those funds could not be used at a religious school and so he struck down the program.

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