The sibling divide: Vermont’s educational double standard

Parents kept their promises. The state didn’t. 

With the addition of a new client and an amended complaint in Caspers v. State of Vermont, Liberty Justice Center’s continued fight for the educational freedom of Vermont families just went up a notch.

Watch your backs, bureaucrats.

For more than two centuries, Vermont has kept a simple promise to parents who live in towns without public schools: if the state cannot provide a school, it will help you choose one.

That promise—known as town tuitioning—has given Vermont families peace of mind for generations. Parents could plan. Children could dream. And siblings could follow the same educational paths, regardless of their ZIP code.

For example, in the town of Georgia, Vermont, there is no public high school. For years, families have relied on town tuitioning to send their children to schools that offer quality academics and reasonable commutes. They made long-term plans based on the state’s promise over the last 157 years.

Now those plans are unraveling.

With the signing of Act 73, the Legislature imposed a maze of new restrictions on town tuitioning that have nothing to do with what families need and everything to do with arbitrary lines drawn by lawmakers.

Perhaps the most egregious is a double standard allowing some Vermont children to continue using their town tuition freely, while arbitrarily restricting its use for everyone else.

The result is as unfair as it is heartbreaking: Older siblings who enrolled before Act 73 will continue receiving tuition support. Younger siblings living in the same home, however, will not—solely because of when they were born or when a school was founded.

That is not legitimate education policy. It is discrimination by bureaucracy under the Vermont Constitution.

Enter our lawsuit: Caspers v. State of Vermont.

In one family, a high‑achieving student currently attends an independent high school using town tuitioning. His younger sister, equally hardworking and just two years behind him, has always expected to follow the same path. Now she cannot.

Their mother must either find up to $18,000 per year out of pocket—or explain to her daughter why the opportunity open to her brother is now closed to her. No parent should have to have that conversation.

In another household, a mother has three children. Her oldest is thriving at an independent high school with tuition support. The two younger children have spent years preparing to do the same. Under Act 73, they have been stripped of that same chance. The cost to treat her children equally? Up to $36,000 per year. That’s simply unaffordable for most Vermonters. 

Act 73 doesn’t just limit choice and options, it does so irrationally. The law bars tuitioning at schools created after July 1, 2025, no matter how strong their academics or how well they serve students. It also punishes schools that are popular with families who do not rely on town tuitioning, effectively saying that if a school is “too desirable,” their children cannot go.

That isn’t about helping kids. It’s about restricting parents. And, most importantly, it harms students.

Vermont’s Constitution guarantees children a substantially equal educational opportunity and requires the state to distribute public benefits fairly. Act 73 does the opposite. It creates new inequities, sometimes within the same family, based on arbitrary timing and geography rather than each student’s needs.

Supporters say the law promotes fairness and predictability. But there is nothing fair about treating siblings within the same household differently. And there is nothing predictable about changing the rules after families have built their lives around them.

Town tuitioning has always reflected Vermont’s values: trust parents, respect local realities and put children first. Act 73 replaces that with red tape that places systems ahead of families.

That is why we’ve taken the state to court.

Originally filed earlier this year, we recently filed an amended complaint that not only contains new allegations concerning another family whose children are being subjected to an arbitrary double standard, even though they live under the same roof, as well as strengthening our allegations regarding Act 73’s unconstitutionality.

And in the next several months, we plan to present this case in court before a judge, and prevent Act 73 from going into effect.

This case is not about privilege. It is about parents keeping the promise they made to their children—and the state keeping the promise it made to Vermonters.

No parent should have to tell one child “yes” and another “no” simply because the law that has been in place for over 150 years changed overnight.

Vermont can do better. And for the sake of the families now caught in the crosshairs of Act 73, it must.

Tim Snowball is Senior Counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public-interest litigation law firm. Caspers v. State of Vermont was filed in the Vermont Superior Court, Civil Division, on February 26, 2026.