Tax Credits, Courts, and Cabers

As Adam Schaeffer notes on this blog today, education tax credits have won in court, again. This time in Arizona.

I've long argued that their superior resistance to court challenge is one of many reasons to favor tax credits over other approaches to school choice. But there's one court that even credits are likely to run into trouble with: the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The 9th Circuit is the most statist appellate court in the nation, and it has been sitting on an education tax credit case, Winn v. Garriott, for more than a year. For the record, I expect it to rule against the program sometime in 2009. If it does, that ruling will be appealed and almost certainly overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Supporters of educational freedom should both brace themselves for this setback and also put it in perspective. The 9th Circuit is overturned more often than a caber at the Highland games.