<Tr> <Th_colspan="2"> Laws applied </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> First Amendment </Td> </Tr> <P> Zelman v. Simmons - Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002), was a 5 - 4 decision of the United States Supreme Court that upheld an Ohio program that used school vouchers . The Court decided that the program did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment even if the vouchers could be used for private, religious schools . </P> <P> The public schools in many of the poorer parts of Cleveland were deemed failures, and the legislature enacted the Pilot Project Scholarship Program in an effort to address the problem . Ohio had been running the program, which allowed parents of qualified students in the Cleveland School District, from the 1996--97 school year, to use public money to pay for tuition at private schools in the program, which included religious schools . </P>

The supreme court finally addressed the constitutionality of school voucher programs in