One of the nation’s most ambitious school choice programs, in West Virginia, is in limbo after a state circuit judge blocked implementation of the program just weeks before the start of the new school year.

Thousands of West Virginia students face an uncertain fall semester after the judge declared that the state’s Hope Scholarship program, slated to begin in August, violated the state’s constitution, and ordered a permanent injunction on it. 

Until Arizona passed a similar law last month, the West Virginia program was the only universal voucher program in the country and would have redistributed an estimated $120 million a year in taxpayer funds directly to parents.

A leading pro-school choice non-profit, EdChoice, said the program “has the potential to help tens of thousands of students obtain the educational services that best fit their needs.”

State officials, along with parents who depend on the program, have appealed the ruling, saying, among other things, the judge overstepped her authority. The plaintiffs in the case said stopping the voucher program is “absolutely essential to protect the state’s students and their public schools.”

The 3,100 students who enrolled in the program and their parents have been left scrambling to make alternative plans for the upcoming year.

“It was like a month’s notice, which isn’t very much when you spent a year planning your children’s educational needs,” one parent of four, Katie Switzer, said.

Ms. Switzer, a co-defendant in the lawsuit that blocked the program along with the state, planned to use the money for her two oldest children, one of whom — her eldest daughter, Ruth — has apraxia, a rare neurological condition impeding her ability to speak and express herself.

Ms. Switzer said she genuinely wanted to send her children to public schools, but was discouraged by the local school district’s approach to special needs. The Hope Scholarship was an “incredible opportunity,” she said, for her to craft a program for her daughter that combined special needs education at a charter school, homeschooling, and speech therapy. 

She had planned to use her Hope voucher to pay for speech therapy for her daughter.

“Now, there’s none of that adaptability that we had planned to do with the scholarship,” she said in the aftermath of the injunction. “It’s just been really disruptive.”

Ms. Switzer can’t homeschool her children now because if the program is reinstated, they will no longer be eligible.

Only students currently enrolled in public schools, or students who have not begun kindergarten, can apply for the Hope vouchers. Recipients must drop out of public schools entirely, but they get $4,300 per-student annually to spend on private schools, tutors, or a number of other education-related expenses.

Litigators for the plaintiffs who sued to block the program, a public school parent and teacher, argued that the state legislature can only fund public schools according to the state constitution, which mandates “a thorough and efficient system of free schools.” 

The judge, Joanna Tabit, ruled in their favor following a hearing July 6.

A lawyer representing Ms. Switzer and another defendant, Joe Gay, doesn’t dispute that the legislature should fund public schools, but said “simply having a duty to provide public schools doesn’t tell you that you’re not allowed to do other things.”

For her part, Ms. Switzer said she is not anti-public school. She is like many others, she said, “who are trying to use the Hope Scholarship are just trying to do what’s best for our children in a really bad educational environment.”