Iowa's School Voucher Program challenged in federal court

Written May 14, 2025 by Sondra Wilson.

A core tenet of our constitutional form of government is the separation of church and state:

“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.”

– James Madison

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.“

– Thomas Jefferson

By the end of this article, you should have no question: Iowa’s school voucher program is not only unconstitutional: it is dangerous. There’s a line of reasoning here, so bear with me. First thing’s first:

Iowa’s School Voucher Program is Unconstitutional

On January 24, 2023 Governor Reynolds signed House File 68 (aka the “School Voucher Program”) into law, designed to shovel $345 million in tax dollars per year into private, religious institutions (Gruber-Miller & Akin 2023).

Governor Reynolds and Iowa’s Republican legislators (who are actually RINOs — see below) worked to undermine and subvert our constitutional form of government by signing House File 68, which is designed to starve out Iowa’s public schools by siphoning $345M being into private, religious schools. Although there are some non-religious private schools in Iowa, 84 percent are religious. (55% are Catholic, 20% Christian, 11% Lutheran, and one is Islamic (Meyer 2023).

Real Republicans wouldn’t have signed House File 68

Abraham Lincoln held the utmost respect for the Constitution, and believed that any of his controversial actions in relation to the Constitution were necessary for the preservation of the Union during the extraordinary times of the Civil War. Throughout his career he spoke of the importance of the Constitution:

1856 — “Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”

1858 — “[The prosperity of the United States] is not the result of accident. It has a philosophic cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result.”

1861 — “I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made.”

Although the Constitution was a far cry from perfect — such that it justified the heinous crime of slavery — it was written during a time when slavery was widespread worldwide, and the moral obligations embedded into the words of several of the Founding Fathers eventually eroded America’s original sin via setting forth its abolition.

On January 1, 1863 President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring freedom for the slaves in ten Confederate states. Lincoln, anticipating backlash challenging his authority on the matter, issued the Executive Order by his authority as “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy,” cited under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution. (National Park Service).

The point is, back in Lincoln’s day, Republicans were strong proponents of upholding the Constitution above all else, for they knew that throughout European history, heinous injustices were committed by governments, when ruled by religious doctrine. After all, religious doctrines can incite people toward harming others if those people are convinced that they are doing God’s will — especially from an early age.

Teaching Children that God is Anti-LGBT+, Anti-Abortion manufactures Loyal Rights-Violating Adult Voters

That s why using public tax dollars to fund private, religious schools is so dangerous. Teaching children that God is anti-LGBT+ and anti-abortion will eventually transform Iowa voters into anti-LGBT+, anti-reproductive rights voters. In other words,

siphoning undermine and subvert our constitutional form of government:

Protecting Your Ministry Handbook

Donald Trump, Kim Reynolds, and MAGA are not Republicans:

They’re RINOS!

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump accused Republicans who didn’t back his political agenda as being “RINOs”, or “Republican in name only” (USA Today). The truth is, however, once you take the masks off, MAGA’s “America First” motto reveals who the real RINOs are:

Binghamton, NY: Ku Klux Klan stages an ‘America First’ parade in Binghamton, NY. Photograph. 1920’s. (Getty Images)

Above image from KUTV used for First Amendment purposes in accordance with the US Copyright Officer’s Fair Use Policy and the Fair Use Doctrine (KUTV).

So now, when you hear Trump say, “America First”, as he was on many, many occasions since he rose to power, let there be no question: he knows exactly what he is doing.

Here is an excerpt from a song by famous American folk singer Woodie Guthrie. It is about Donald Trump’s father Fred, called “Old Man Trump”:

I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed that color line
Here at his Beach Haven family project

Beach Haven ain’t my home!
No, I just can’t pay this rent!
My money’s down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain’t my home! (WoodieGuthrie.org).

This case was brought against Fred and Donald Trump, and their real estate company, in 1973 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

In October 1973, the Justice Department filed United States v. Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump, and Trump Management, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (federal court in Brooklyn).

The complaint alleged that the firm had committed systemic violations of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in their many complexes–39 buildings, between them containing over 14,000 apartments. The allegations included evidence from black and white “testers” who had sought to rent apartments; the white testers were told of vacancies; the black testers were not, or were steered to apartment complexes with a higher proportion of racial minorities. The complaint also alleged that Trump employees had placed codes next to housing applicant names to indicate if they were black.

The Trumps retained Roy Cohn, former aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy, to defend them; they counter-claimed against the government, seeking $100 million in damages for defamation.

The case was assigned to District Judge Edward R. Neaher. He dismissed the counterclaim and allowed the Fair Housing Act suit to proceed.

After two years, the matter settled with a consent decree, signed June 10, 1975, which prohibited the Trumps from “discriminating against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling.” In addition to a general injunction against discrimination, the decree prohibits specific discriminatory practices, such as lying about the availability of apartments or interfering with individuals’ enjoyment of their housing rights through threats or coercion. Fred and Donald Trump were ordered to “thoroughly acquaint themselves personally on a detailed basis” with the Fair Housing Act. The agreement also required the Trumps to place ads informing minorities they had an equal opportunity to seek housing at their properties (Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse).

Page in making. please check back soon! (June 17, 2025)

Although more will be added to my plan, of paramount importance is diverting the $345M being dumped into private schools — from the blatantly-unconstitutional school voucher program (House File 68) — into to public schools.

In the 1990s, Iowa was ranked in the top five states when it came to public education. Since then, our state has fallen to the middle of the pack.

“The education system in Iowa has always been something that Iowans have been proud of,” said Leo Landis, state curator at the State Historical Society of Iowa. “Our history of education is really rich and it goes back to the 1850s. Iowa was pretty early in creating a system of free public schools,” (Rooker 2022).

Divert $345M from School Voucher Program to Public Schools:

Lemon v. Kurtzman, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris

References

Belin, Laura. (March 23, 2025). Iowa House Republican Admits “Rookie Mistake” Over Extremist Handout. https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2025/03/23/iowa-house-republican-admits-rookie-mistake-over-extremist-handout/

Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse.Case: United States v. Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump, and Trump Management, Inc. https://clearinghouse.net/case/15342/.

Gruber-Miller, Stephen, and Katie Akin. “Jubilant Kim Reynolds Signs Iowa’s Seismic ‘school Choice’ Bill into Law. What It Means:” The Des Moines Register, Des Moines Register, 25 Jan. 2023, www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/24/iowa-governor-kim-reynolds-signs-school-choice-scholarships-education-bill-into-law/69833074007/.

KUTV. (March 1, 2021). Utah candidate claims Trump’s ‘America First’ slogan is ‘code for white supremacists’. https://kutv.com/news/utah-legislature-2021/utah-candidate-trumps-america-first-slogan-is-kkk-code-for-white-supremacists.

Meyer, Virginia. “School Funding Plan Compels Government Support of Religion.” Log In, 19 Jan. 2023, www.thegazette.com/letters-to-the-editor/school-funding-plan-compels-government-support-of-religion/.

National Park Service. (Retrieved June 17 2025). Lincoln and the U.S. Constitution. https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/constitution.htm. Citing:

Eric Foner, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (2006)

Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War, The Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (2001)

Mary E. Neely, Jr., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (1992)

William Whiting, The War Powers of the President (1864), available on the Library of Congress website (www.loc.gov)

The National Constitution Center: www.constitutioncenter.org/lincoln

Rooker, Amanda. (August 22, 2022). Report card on Iowa schools: Data shows how Iowa compares to other states. KCCI Des Moines 8. https://www.kcci.com/article/report-card-on-iowa-schools-data-shows-how-iowa-compares-to-other-states/40961606.

USA Today. (May 23, 2024). What is a RINO? What to know about the weaponized term in GOP politics. Sam Woodward. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/23/what-is-a-rino-in-gop-politics/73817513007/.

Rookie Mistake: https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2025/03/23/iowa-house-republican-admits-rookie-mistake-over-extremist-handout/

WoodieGuthrie.org. https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Old_Man_Trump.htm.

On January 24, 2023 Governor Reynolds signed House File 68 (aka “School Voucher Program”) into law, which now shovels $345 million tax dollars per year into private schools (Gruber-Miller & Akin 2023). 84 percent of Iowa’s private schools are religiously affiliated: 55% identify as Catholic, 20% as Christian and 11% as Lutheran. There is one Islamic school (Meyer 2023).

The principle of separation of church and state in the US, enshrined in the First Amendment, generally prohibits government funding of religious activities and prevents the government from endorsing or establishing a religion. This means tax dollars cannot be used to directly support religious institutions or activities, like schools or charitable organizations, even if those organizations also provide secular services.

The Curse of Ham was used to justify slavery;
The Fable of Sodom & Gomorrah is used to justify anti-LGBT+ bigotry

This handbook, designed to help religious schools who indoctrinate children into forming anti-LGBT+ beliefs, is circulated to religious schools.

Genesis 9:18–29, sometimes referred to as the curse of Ham, is one of the most cryptic stories in the Old Testament. Subject to a multitude of interpretations, this passage has been widely deployed as the biblical basis for race-based chattel slavery. In the story, Noah gets drunk and falls asleep naked in his tent. His son Ham walks in on his sleeping father and sees his father naked. Ham leaves to tell his two brothers, Shem and Japheth, yet they respond differently. Instead of gazing upon their father’s unclothed body, they quickly grab a blanket and walk backwards into his tent to cover him. When Noah wakes up and discovers what Ham has done, Noah curses Ham’s son Canaan.Conversely, Noah blesses his other sons and consigns Canaan to serve them:

Noah concludes with a final pronouncement: “May Canaan be the slave of Japheth” (9:27). Proslavery advocates used these verses to make a biblical case that black people—as descendants of Ham—belonged in a state of slavery.

For some, Ham’s transgression provided an understanding of the origin of slavery and where it fit in the Bible’s grand narrative. “It was in consequence of sin . . . that the first slave sentence of which we have any record was pronounced by Noah upon Canaan and his descendants,” wrote Presbyterian minister George D. Armstrong.⁵ Proslavery theologians taught that slavery had been a regrettable but necessary reality ever since Ham’s transgression.

This passage from Genesis not only provided a basis for slavery’s existence, but it was an indication for some that God decreed a specific race of people to be cursed and live their days in bondage. Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America, remarked in his well-known “Cornerstone Speech” that “the negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.”⁶

And Dabney tentatively advanced a claim that many white Christians held as incontrovertible truth: “It may be that we should find little difficulty in tracing the lineage of the present Africans to Ham.”⁷ A racial genealogy underlies the racist interpretation of Canaan’s curse. It assumed that the progeny of Shem became the Jewish people, the descendants of Japheth became white people, and these two were the rightful masters of those descended from Ham, the “degraded” black race. In one stroke of dubious demography, slavery became the right and proper place of Africans specifically and exclusively.

Abolitionists advanced several arguments to refute the curse of Ham as justification for the enslavement of black people. First, they pointed out that Noah pronounced the curse on Canaan, not Ham. Canaan’s curse had been fulfilled, they said, when Israel conquered the Canaanite lands. Thus, there was no perpetual curse that still applied in the nineteenth century. Abolitionists also questioned whether black Africans were the genealogical descendants of Ham at all. And how could white people definitively trace their lineage to that of Shem or Japheth?

One abolitionist challenged proslavery advocates by asking, “Where is the sentence [of Scripture] in which God ever appointed you, the Anglo-Saxon race [over another people], you, the mixture of all races under heaven, you, who can not tell whether the blood of Sem, Ham, or Japheth mingles in your veins”?⁸

One of the best biblical cases against American slavery was not to deny that faithful people in the Bible enslaved others but to demonstrate how that form of slavery—the slavery of the ancient Near East—was far different from the slavery practiced in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the American South. It was impossible to deny that some form of unpaid labor had characterized the economy of virtually every society for thousands of years. Yet enslaved people in these contexts had endured a different type of bondage. In most cases, they could legally marry and own property, and they worked for a specific term, not a lifetime. Slaves in other cultures were not born into servitude. They might offer their labor in order to pay off a debt, or they were captured in war. Slavery was not exclusively a matter of race or ethnicity in other cultures either. Of course, the point of this was not to suggest that slavery was a favorable way to live. Rather, this argument was used to demonstrate that southern theologians gave virtually no consideration to the unique form of slavery that existed in America.

So, unfortunately, the most potent biblical antislavery argument—demonstrating the differences between slavery in the ancient Near East and that of the American South—also took the most effort to understand. Attempting to list the differences between slavery as practiced in the Bible and race-based chattel slavery required an in-depth grasp of cultures thousands of years removed from the mid-1800s.

The argument required a rather sophisticated knowledge of the differences between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament people of God. For most Christians, even those sympathetic to the plight of black people, the southern proslavery advocates seemed to have a clearer and simpler biblical argument, one that did not require sources outside of Scripture or employ unfamiliar interpretations.

– Thomas Jefferson

“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.”

– James Madison

References