ACLJ Files Major Brief at Ohio Supreme Court: Quit Shortchanging Christian School Students

The fight for religious freedom doesn’t always take a pause for Christmas. The ACLJ has just filed a critical brief in the Supreme Court of Ohio defending the constitutional rights of parents and religious liberty in education. Our client, Marrisa Siebold, a mother whose child attends a Christian school, is fighting the Columbus City Schools Board of Education’s blatant disregard for state law and parental rights.

The facts in this case are shocking. Ohio law requires school districts to provide transportation to all students in their jurisdiction – regardless of what school they attend.  However, the Columbus School Board arbitrarily denied transportation to thousands of private school students, including children attending religious schools – after the school year was underway. In defiance of state law, it openly admitted it would rather pay penalties than fulfill its legal obligations to these families.

In Ohio, when a school board refuses to transport a student, state law requires the school to provide interim transportation while the parent challenges the school’s transportation decision. In other words, Ohio law requires school districts to provide transportation to eligible private school students. If a school district claims it is “impractical” to transport a student, parents can challenge this decision. During this challenge process, the law mandates that transportation must continue.

The Columbus School Board is deliberately ignoring these requirements and has caused significant harm to our client. She has had to take time off work to transport her child, which has resulted in lost hours, lost income, and challenging work hours. She additionally faced significant wear and tear on her vehicle and correlating costs.

Eventually, the School Board began providing some transportation, but its attempts were riddled with miscommunication and shocking callousness:

• When the bus service was supposed to begin, no bus showed up. And no prior notice was given.
• Later that same day our client’s child was denied transportation because the School Board did not have paperwork showing him on the route, despite its promise that he would be transported. The same thing occurred the next day – no bus showed up.
• Our client’s child was subjected to grueling bus rides lasting up to two hours. He consistently arrived late to school, jeopardizing his education.
• As winter began, the School Board changed the pickup time to 6:30 a.m. without notifying the family at all. Our client’s child waited for approximately 45 minutes in below-freezing temperatures for a bus that never came.
• Our client received only one communication – the initial denial. All other information came secondhand through the school. When confronted about their failure to notify parents of critical schedule changes, transportation officials brazenly claimed they had “no obligation” to inform parents.

The School Board’s actions violate state law and undermine both religious liberty and school choice. We are seeking a court order from the Supreme Court of Ohio to compel the School Board to meet its legal obligations to these families. Its last-minute attempt to provide transportation just before court deadlines reveals its true intentions: to continue discriminating against families who choose to provide a Christian education for their children.

Our brief presents a legal argument that the Supreme Court of Ohio should order the School Board to actually comply with its obligations and provide transportation. Our client is entitled to relief. The School Board has a mandatory obligation, and any after-the-fact penalties imposed are insufficient to redress the injuries that she is currently experiencing for the failure to provide the mandatory interim transportation.

Further, we argue that there is no adequate legal substitute for protecting our client’s legal right to transportation. The law is not discretionary or optional; it is clearly and expressly mandatory. The law contains no exception for interim transportation that is costly or difficult. Rather than force students through a potentially lengthy process of mediation and administrative review, Ohio law has made clear that if a student challenges a school board’s impracticality determination, the student has a right to transportation to school. There are penalties for the failure to comply with the law, but those penalties don’t replace the legal obligation.

The School Board cannot avoid responsibility through last-minute, half-hearted attempts to comply. Since it only halted unlawful actions after the case was filed, it must prove its conduct will not recur – something it has failed to demonstrate, as noted in our brief.

The ACLJ is dedicated to defending parental rights and holding government officials accountable for their obligations to religious and private school students. We will keep fighting to protect religious liberty and constitutional rights from government overreach. Your support makes these crucial legal battles possible.