Last week, the Florida Education Association showed exactly where its priorities lie—and it’s not with students. The union filed a lawsuit seeking to declare the state’s school-choice programs unconstitutional. Its central claim rests on a single clause in the Florida Constitution: that the state shall provide “a uniform . . . system of free public schools.” According to the union, allowing families to use taxpayer funds for private options somehow undermines that mandate.

This argument collapses under basic logic. The constitutional requirement to provide a uniform system of free public schools sets a floor, not a ceiling. Requiring the state to provide A does not forbid lawmakers from also providing B. Florida maintains its public-school system. School choice does not dismantle public schools or reduce the state’s obligation to fund them. Instead, lawmakers have expanded opportunity by letting families choose the best fit for their children. The state can—and does—walk and chew gum at the same time.

An Idaho Supreme Court justice made that exact point during oral arguments in a nearly identical lawsuit brought by teachers’ unions earlier this year. Idaho’s education clause mirrors Florida’s almost word for word, requiring the state to provide a “general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.”

In February of this year, the Idaho Supreme Court issued a unanimous 5–0 ruling against the unions and upheld the state’s new school-choice program. The same language that the Florida Education Association now treats as an existential threat posed no obstacle in Idaho. It should pose none in the Sunshine State, either.

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Florida’s constitution is hardly unique. Every state has an education clause. Louisiana, Ohio, and Oklahoma operate universal school-choice programs despite clauses that read much like Florida’s. Those states have not collapsed into educational chaos. Their public schools continue to function. Families simply enjoy more options. The presence of choice has not erased the public system; it has supplemented it.

More than 500,000 Florida children currently use school-choice scholarships. It is a major feature of the state’s education landscape. The FEA nevertheless insists on threatening the futures of those half-million children and their families. It’s a bold strategy. We will see if it works out for them.

Just weeks ago, Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation that ends taxpayer funding for union political activities and requires at least 50 percent of union members to vote in favor of recertification each year. Rather than adapt to greater accountability, the union has doubled down on litigation to protect its monopoly at the expense of kids and families.

This move fails to read the room. School choice enjoys broad support across party lines in Florida. Families want options. They vote with their feet when given the chance. In 2018, exit polls showed that Governor DeSantis owed his narrow victory in large part to “school choice moms.” Democratic candidate Andrew Gillum had campaigned to eliminate the program then serving more than 100,000 low-income children. Voters rejected that message.

The unions learned nothing from that defeat. Instead of broadening their appeal, they have escalated their war on choice. Democrat Charlie Crist responded by running in 2022 with teachers’ union president Karla Hernández-Mats as his lieutenant governor candidate. He lost to DeSantis by nearly 20 points. The union had already shown its hand in 2020, when it sued unsuccessfully to keep schools closed during the pandemic. Voters remembered.

The first plaintiff listed in the current lawsuit is Andrew Spar. Court filings describe him simply as a “parent.” They conveniently omit that he is the president of the FEA—the very organization fighting to preserve its monopoly.

The union’s constitutional claim also collides with the empirical record. A peer-reviewed study published in a leading economics journal in 2023 examined the effects of school-choice competition in Florida. It found that the presence of choice options led to higher standardized test scores and lower rates of absenteeism and suspensions in public schools. Ten of the eleven rigorous studies on the subject reached the same conclusion: Competition from school choice acts as a rising tide that lifts all boats in Florida.

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Public schools have not suffered under Florida’s choice expansion. If anything, they have thrived. Florida once languished near the bottom of the National Assessment of Educational Progress rankings. After years of aggressive school-choice growth, the state now sits near the top. The uniform public system the union claims to defend has improved precisely because families gained leverage to demand better results.

The union’s lawsuit asks the courts to ignore this progress and to strip options from Florida families. It asks judges to pretend that a constitutional floor somehow prohibits additional opportunity. It asks Floridians to accept that the state may fund public schools but must not allow a single dollar to follow a child to a better alternative.

The Idaho Supreme Court already rejected that logic. Other states with similar constitutional language have rejected it in practice. Florida families have rejected it at the ballot box. The only remaining question is whether the courts will once again side with evidence, precedent, and parental authority—or whether they will hand the union a veto over the education of half a million children.

The facts are clear. School choice has not harmed Florida’s public schools. It has strengthened them. The constitutional text does not forbid it. And the political will of Florida voters has repeatedly affirmed it. The Florida Education Association’s lawsuit is not a defense of public education. It is a defense of the union’s own outdated monopoly.