Minority groups support vouchers. In Michigan, where voters trounced a voucher referendum 69 percent to 31 percent last November, opposition to voucher actually ran higher in Detroit, which is heavily black. Voters there rejected vouchers 72 percent to 28 percent. In the California vote, no racial group showed majority support for vouchers. Whites opposed the plan 70 percent to 30 percent, blacks by 68 percent to 32 percent, Hispanics by 77 percent to 23 percent and Asians by 66 percent to 34 percent.
Vouchers present no constitutional problems.
Both courts declared this type of aid to religious schools a violation of the First Amendment's separation of church and state. The U.S. Supreme Court has never upheld direct tax support of sectarian education and in fact struck down a voucher-like plan in New York in 1973's Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Nyquist . Vouchers are aid to parents, not schools, and thus are like scholarships. Tax money ends up flowing directly into the school's treasury. Any attempt to claim that this aid to the parents is a ruse.