Schools and the Constitution

Most of what Idahoans argue about in education, from teacher pay to building bonds to school choice, eventually runs into Article IX of the Idaho Constitution. It is titled "Education and School Lands," and it does three jobs. It orders the Legislature to run a public school system. It keeps public money away from religious institutions. And it sets up a permanent land and investment trust whose earnings help pay for schools.

This lesson walks through each part with the real Idaho cases that tested it, including the 2026 decision on the Parental Choice Tax Credit. All constitutional text quoted here comes from the official version on the Idaho Legislature's Article IX page. This is civic education, not legal advice.

What Article IX contains

Article IX has eleven sections. The official section titles are a good map:

Section	Official title	What it does in plain terms
1	Legislature to establish system of free schools	The core duty: a general, uniform and thorough public school system
2	Board of education	A state board of education supervises public schools and state educational institutions
3	Public school permanent endowment fund to remain intact	The endowment principal can never be spent; earnings go to schools
4	Public school permanent endowment fund defined	Lists what goes into the fund, including proceeds from school land sales
5	Sectarian appropriations prohibited	No public money in aid of churches or church-controlled schools
6	Religious test and teaching in school prohibited	No religious tests for students or teachers; no sectarian teaching in public schools
7	State board of land commissioners	Names the five statewide officials who make up the Land Board
8	Location and disposition of public lands	The Land Board must manage state lands for maximum long-term return
9	Compulsory attendance at schools	Lets the Legislature require attendance from ages six to eighteen, unless a child is educated by other means
10	State university, location, regents, tuition, fees and lands	The University of Idaho, its regents and its lands
11	Investing permanent endowment funds	How endowment money may be invested

Two things are not in Article IX. The official English amendment on the November 3, 2026 ballot (HJR 6) would go in Article X. Local school bond votes are governed mainly by Article VIII, Section 3, covered in Lesson 8.

Section 1: the duty to run public schools

Section 1 is one sentence long. Read it slowly, because every phrase has been argued over in court:

"The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it shall be the duty of the legislature of Idaho, to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools."

Idaho Const. art. IX, sec. 1

Four things stand out.

• It states a reason. The framers tied public schools to self-government. An educated public keeps a republic stable.
• It is a duty. "Shall be the duty of the legislature" is mandatory language. The U.S. Constitution has no education clause at all. Idaho's charter, like most state constitutions, does.
• It names qualities. The system must be general, uniform and thorough. Each word has been the basis for a lawsuit.
• It says public and free. Common schools must be open to the public and free to attend.

"Uniform" does not mean equal dollars

In the 1970s, school districts argued that Idaho's reliance on local property taxes left poor districts with far less money per student, and that this violated the uniformity requirement and equal protection. The Idaho Supreme Court rejected those claims in Thompson v. Engelking, 96 Idaho 793, 537 P.2d 635 (1975). Later courts read Thompson as settling that uniformity refers to curriculum and the structure of the system, not identical funding.

"Thorough" is something courts will define

The next round came in the early 1990s. An association of school superintendents called Idaho Schools for Equal Educational Opportunity (ISEEO) and dozens of school districts sued the state. The trial court dismissed the case. In Idaho Schools for Equal Educational Opportunity v. Evans, 123 Idaho 573, 850 P.2d 724 (1993), the Idaho Supreme Court split the claims:

• It affirmed dismissal of the uniformity claims, following Thompson. Uniformity requires "uniformity in curriculum, not uniformity in funding."
• It held that education is not a "fundamental right" for state equal protection purposes, so most of the funding formula got ordinary rational basis review.
• It reversed dismissal of the thoroughness claims. The court said it has a "constitutional duty to define the meaning of the thoroughness requirement of art. 9 § 1," and that leaving the definition entirely to the other branches "would be an abject abdication of our role in the American system of government."
• It pointed to the State Board of Education's own rules on facilities, instruction, textbooks and transportation as "consistent with our view of thoroughness."

That 1993 ruling is why Section 1 matters in practice. It turned "thorough" from an aspiration into a standard a court can enforce.

The lesson for advocates: Section 1 is a real, enforceable standard, but a winning lawsuit produces a declaration that the system falls short. The fix still happens in the budget process.

Section 1 and school choice: the 2026 tax credit case

In the 2025 session the Legislature passed House Bill 93, creating the Idaho Parental Choice Tax Credit, now codified at Idaho Code section 63-3029N. According to the court's summary of the statute:

• Parents can claim a refundable credit of up to $5,000 per eligible student per year, or $7,500 for students with certain disabilities, for qualified private education expenses such as private school tuition, tutoring and textbooks.
• Total credits may not exceed $50,000,000 per tax year.
• In 2026, applicants with adjusted gross income at or below 300 percent of the federal poverty level get first priority.
• Parents cannot claim the credit for a semester in which the student is enrolled in a public school.
• The statute says it does not give the state power to regulate nonpublic schools, and that a nonpublic school need not change "its creed, practices, admissions policy, or curriculum" to accept students using the credit.

A coalition including the Committee to Protect and Preserve the Idaho Constitution, Mormon Women for Ethical Government, the Moscow School District (School District No. 281, Latah County) and the Idaho Education Association asked the Idaho Supreme Court to stop the State Tax Commission from carrying out the law. The case is Committee to Protect and Preserve the Idaho Constitution, Inc. v. State, Docket No. 53264-2025, decided February 5, 2026.

What the challengers argued

They made two arguments. First, that Section 1 is both a mandate and a limit: by telling the Legislature to maintain "a" system of public schools, it bars the Legislature from funding a second, private system. Second, that the credit violates the "public purpose doctrine," the long-standing Idaho rule that tax-funded activity must have "primarily a public rather than a private purpose" (Idaho Water Resource Board v. Kramer, 97 Idaho 535 (1976)).

The challengers leaned on Evans v. Andrus, 124 Idaho 6, 855 P.2d 467 (1993), where the court struck down a law splitting the State Board of Education into three bodies. Section 2 vests supervision in "a" state board of education, and the court read that as requiring a single board.

What the court held

Chief Justice G. Richard Bevan wrote for a unanimous court. Justices Brody, Zahn and Meyer joined, and Justice Moeller wrote a special concurrence.

• Standing. The court found that most petitioners lacked traditional standing because their claimed injuries were "speculative and hypothetical." It relaxed the standing rules anyway, reasoning that it was unlikely anyone with clear standing would bring the challenge, and reached the merits.
• Section 1. The court held that "the use of the indefinite article 'a' in Article IX, section 1, does not impose a limitation on the legislature's authority to do more than what the provision minimally requires. Rather, it establishes a floor, and not a ceiling." It distinguished Evans: Section 2 grants authority to a single entity, while Section 1 imposes a duty. The court also noted that the challengers did not argue that the public school system itself was deficient.
• Public purpose. "Education is a public purpose," the court said, and "the fact that a tax credit may incidentally benefit private enterprise does not transform the statute's purpose into a primarily private one."
• Result. The petition was denied and dismissed, and the Tax Commission was awarded attorney fees.

Justice Moeller wrote separately to stress that he did not see the ruling as a "landmark" or "watershed." In his view "the constitutional foundation for public education in Idaho remains firmly intact," and the Legislature still must maintain public schools that are "general, uniform and thorough." He added that because the challenge came before any credit was paid, the claimed harms were "hypothetical and speculative" and "may be reexamined in the future when the impact of this legislation can be properly ascertained."

Sections 5 and 6: religion and public schools

Section 5 is one of the strictest church-state provisions in any state constitution. Here is its core:

"Neither the legislature nor any county, city, town, township, school district, or other public corporation, shall ever make any appropriation, or pay from any public fund or moneys whatever, anything in aid of any church or sectarian or religious society, or for any sectarian or religious purpose, or to help support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church, sectarian or religious denomination whatsoever..."

Idaho Const. art. IX, sec. 5

The section ends with one modern exception: a health facilities authority may finance private, nonprofit health facilities owned or operated by a religious organization. Provisions like this are often called "Blaine Amendments," after a failed federal amendment introduced in 1875 by Congressman James Blaine, though that label is a description, not part of Idaho's text.

Idaho reads Section 5 more strictly than the First Amendment

In Epeldi v. Engelking, 94 Idaho 390, 488 P.2d 860 (1971), the court struck down a 1970 amendment to Idaho Code section 33-1501 that let school districts bus private school students, including parochial school students, with state support. The majority acknowledged that under the U.S. Supreme Court's Everson decision, busing did not violate the federal Establishment Clause. But it held Idaho's framers "intended to more positively enunciate the separation between church and state," and that busing parochial students, "the effect of which would be to aid the school, is prohibited." Two justices dissented, arguing Idaho's clause was no more restrictive than the First Amendment.

The federal limit on no-aid clauses

State constitutions cannot override the U.S. Constitution. Two recent U.S. Supreme Court cases matter for anyone reading Section 5 today:

• Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (June 30, 2020, 5 to 4). Montana's courts had used the state's no-aid clause to shut down a tax credit scholarship program. The Supreme Court held that applying the clause to exclude religious schools violated the Free Exercise Clause: "A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious."
• Carson v. Makin (June 21, 2022, 6 to 3). Maine's tuition program for towns without high schools excluded religious schools. The Court held that exclusion violated the Free Exercise Clause.

The practical result: Section 5 still bars direct government aid to churches and church-run schools as such, but if Idaho opens a benefit program to private schools generally, federal law limits the state's ability to carve out religious schools. How those rules apply to any particular Idaho program is a question for courts, and no Idaho appellate court has yet applied Espinoza to Section 5.

Section 6: no religious tests or teaching

Section 6 says no religious test may be required of any student or teacher, no one may be required to attend a religious service, and "no sectarian or religious tenets or doctrines shall ever be taught in the public schools." It also bars any "distinction or classification of pupils" on account of race or color, and bars books and papers "of a political, sectarian or denominational character" in the schools. That last clause is often quoted in local curriculum fights; federal free speech law applies too.

Section 2: the State Board of Education

Section 2 vests "general supervision of the state educational institutions and public school system" in a state board of education, with membership, powers and duties "prescribed by law." The elected state superintendent of public instruction is an ex officio member. Evans v. Andrus (1993) is the key case: the Legislature can shape the board by statute, but it cannot divide the board's constitutional supervision among several separate boards. In the 2026 tax credit case, the court suggested the State Board itself might have had standing to sue but was "apparently not ready or willing" to do so.

The school endowment: a trust, not a slush fund

When Idaho became a state, Congress granted it land to support schools and other institutions. According to the Idaho Department of Lands, the original grant was 3,650,763 acres, and about 2.5 million acres of endowment land remain, held for nine beneficiaries that are "largely public schools." Article IX turns that land into a permanent trust.

How the money moves

• Section 4 defines the public school permanent endowment fund: proceeds from selling school lands, certain other grants and gifts, escheated estates, unclaimed corporate shares, and amounts moved in from the earnings reserve. Sale proceeds may sit in a "land bank fund" to buy replacement land for a time set by the Legislature.
• Section 3 says the permanent fund "shall forever remain inviolate and intact." Earnings go into a public school earnings reserve fund and are distributed to the schools. The Legislature may appropriate from the earnings reserve only for the administrative costs of managing endowment assets. The state treasurer is custodian, and the state must make up losses to the permanent fund.
• Section 11 lists permitted investments, including government bonds and "other investments in which a trustee is authorized to invest pursuant to state law."

The Land Board and "maximum long term financial return"

Section 7 names the State Board of Land Commissioners: the governor, superintendent of public instruction, secretary of state, attorney general and state controller. Section 8 gives the board its standard. It must manage state lands "in such manner as will secure the maximum long term financial return to the institution to which granted," and may not sell land "for less than the appraised price." It also requires that land grants be "held in trust."

The court enforced that standard in Idaho Watersheds Project v. State Board of Land Commissioners, 133 Idaho 64, 982 P.2d 367 (1999). A conservation group that wanted to bid on state grazing leases challenged a statute, Idaho Code section 58-310B, that directed the board to weigh factors such as benefits to the state and the livestock industry in contested lease applications. The court held that Section 8 "requires that the State consider only the 'maximum long term financial return' to the schools," and that the statute violated Article IX, Section 8. It voided the 1996 leases at issue and ordered new auctions.

The same day, in a companion case (133 Idaho 55), the court threw out a 1998 voter-approved package of endowment amendments because it combined unrelated changes in one ballot question. Lesson 9 explains that separate-amendment rule.