Kentucky School Funding Case Update

Readers may remember that CLS's Center for Law & Religious Freedom represents the University of the Cumberlands (UC) in a challenge to its receipt of state funding to build a pharmacy school building. Strict separationists argued that the appropriation violated provisions of the Kentucky constitution governing church-state relations. UC got in their sights after the school took action against a student who had violated its conduct policy -- which the student had agreed to follow. (The male student wrote, on a social networking site, about waking up next to his boyfriend.)

On March 6, the Circuit Court in Franklin County ruled that the appropriation for the pharmacy building violated two church-state provisions of the Kentucky constitution. The court also ruled that the legislature's creation of a scholarship program for pharmacy school students violated a provision of the state constitution regarding the procedures for appropriations.

On March 31, UC appealed to the Kentucky Court of Appeals. On April 10, we asked the Kentucky Supreme Court to directly review the trial court's decision, without an intervening Court of Appeals decision.