WILL:

The News: A three-judge panel of the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision in St. Augustine v. Underly, a lawsuit first filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) in 2016, that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) violated state law when denying transportation benefits to families attending St. Augustine School, an independent Catholic school in Washington County. The case was remanded to U.S. District Court for a determination of damages and of whether an injunction should issue.

The Quote: WILL Deputy Counsel, Anthony LoCoco said, “The Seventh Circuit’s decision makes clear that government has no business denying students transportation aid on the basis of its own religious judgments. This is a win for private school families across Wisconsin.”

Background: Wisconsin provides transportation aid to qualifying private school students as long as there is not an overlapping attendance area between private schools that are affiliated with one another, or more specifically, affiliated with the same sponsoring group. In this case, DPI and Friess Lake School District (now part of Holy Hill Area School District) denied St. Augustine students busing rights because there is an Archdiocesan Catholic school in the attendance area.

But St. Augustine is independent and unaffiliated with the Archdiocese. In this case, the school district and DPI determined the definition of Catholic and withheld government benefits until St. Augustine agreed not to call itself “Catholic.”