School vouchers are unconstitutional because they go against the separation of church and state.

I'll accept that I have made a mistake about the definition of a voucher and we are going to work with my opponent's original definition. You will disregard statements under my previous definition and we're going to focus now on the bottom of the two last posts. He completely misunderstands when I ask why we should interpret strictly based on the text of the constitution. What I was implying was that we cannot interpret the constitution strictly by the text. We can be consistent with the constitution but we cannot necessarily go strictly by the text. The text can imply other things but my opponent never gives you any reason to interpret strictly based on the text. But to settle this dispute I brought forward a ruling from the Supreme Court. My never refuted how the Supreme Court holds the authoritative ruling on what the constitution means. He says the ruling is irrelevant because the state is not trying to establish a church. But this misses the entire point of the the ruling. I'll quote it again: "The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another." Take special note that the government cannot pass laws that aid one religion or all religions. So even if the state is not establishing a state church, aiding religious institutions constitutes a violation. Now, he says that it does not aid religions because it simply targets private schools. However if you target private schools are you not aiding them by giving them government money for a student's education? And if you give it to a religious institution it aids them. He says that if we do not offer vouchers to religious schools then we would be discriminating against them and in favor of secular schools. He says this would be unconstitutional but gives no arguments why. Yes, the court ruling does prohibit favoring one religion over another but atheism is not a religion. If it was then every private school would be regarded as a religious school but they are not. Therefore we can discriminate in favor of secular schools. However, if you accept this you are going to vote pro because all school voucher would be aiding religion. But furthermore, the point is not to avoid discrimination between secular and religious, the point is to ensure the separation of church and state. The state cannot aid a religious institution. But finally this does not even consider the fact that we could not give vouchers out at all. If there are no vouchers then there is no discrimination. So my opponent is only circumstantially negating. He uses a car metaphor. But this ignores the fact that the money from the voucher is going directly into a religious institution, to fund it. When the government buys you a car, their money is not going into a religious institution but a secular item. You may use that item to go to church the same way you may use the education from a religious school to get a job but those are indirect effects. The direct effects are that the government is paying for a religious school or a car. So vouchers do directly aid religious schools. He says it simply targets private schools. But go back to something my opponent said: "if you're going to use government money, the government has to approve of what you're going to do with the money." So if the government gives a student a voucher then they have to approve what you are going to do with it. If the state gives you money for a car, then they have to approve which car you get. So for every school voucher the government is going to approve the school. At this point the state is not simply choosing every private school but has to specifically approve each one. So the government is directly choosing to approve religious schools. So it does violate the separation of church and state. Finally we are going to look at why you will vote pro: 1: We have established that the Supreme Court has the authoritative interpretation of the constitution. My opponent has never refuted this. 2: The court ruled that any law that would aid religion would be unconstitutional, although my opponent and I have agreed that it must be direct aid. 3: Discrimination against religious schools and in favor of secular schools is perfectly constitutional. My opponent never brings any argument to the contrary 4: School vouchers are direct aid for religious schools, because the government is paying them to educate a student. The same way that the government would directly pay for a car. This violates the separation of church and state. 5: Every private or religious school has to be approved by the state, at which point if the state approved vouchers for religious schools it would be specifically choosing those schools. This violates the separation of church and state. Thank You.