ZELMAN AND LOCKE

In the past 2 years, the United States Supreme Court has decided two impor-tant cases that will bear directly on legislation and litigation involving school choice programs that provide financial aid to parents of children attending religious schools. Those cases are Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002) and Locke v. Davey (2004). The reasoning in Zelman, along with the litigation in the lower courts leading up to that decision, provide useful insights that should prove helpful in drafting school choice legislation and successfully defending it in court when challenged. The decision in Locke may have impli-cations for litigation involving challenges to state laws and constitutional provisions limiting aid to religious institutions and to students attending reli-gious schools. Both cases are discussed below. BACKGROUND In 1995, in response to the crisis in Cleveland’s public schools a federaldistrict court placed the entire Cleveland public school district under state control. The State of Ohio reacted, in part, by establishing the Pilot Project Scholarship Program, hereinafter referred to as “the voucher pro