DEKALB COUNTY, GA — Georgia's Promise Scholarship Program was designed to give families more say in their children's education. But for three Catholic families, unlocking that support means first placing their children in public school — the very thing they're trying to avoid.

On behalf of those families, Thomas More Society filed a lawsuit and an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order in DeKalb County Superior Court arguing that the Promise Scholarship Program's eligibility rules unconstitutionally force religious families to set aside their beliefs to receive that funding. The families are asking the court to act quickly as the application window for the upcoming semester closes August 31, 2026, and without emergency relief before then, they say they will lose the opportunity to enroll their children for the coming year.

The Promise Scholarship, created by the Georgia legislature in 2024, provides eligible families up to $6,500 per child to attend the school of their choice — public, private, or home school. But to qualify, a child must first spend two consecutive semesters enrolled in public school and must be assigned to a public school the state has designated as failing.

For Catholic families like the Tootles, Sandses, and McCalls, meeting Georgia’s requirements simply is not an option. Pulling their children out of an enriching Catholic educational environment and enrolling them in a failing public school violates their obligations as Catholic parents. It also violates their religious rights.

"We tried public school with our daughter, and it changed her for the worse," said  Joyce McCall, one of the parent plaintiffs. "She hid her faith just to fit in, she struggled to make friends because her peers didn't share her values and often excluded her, and she fell behind in her religious development because there was nothing left in her at the end of the day for anything more. We pulled her out and eventually enrolled her in a Catholic hybrid homeschool. Today she's a missionary.”

“Now Georgia wants us to put our son through that same public school before we can even ask for help paying for the kind of education that turned our daughter's life around," added McCall. "We won't do that to him.”  

Because Georgia denies Promise Scholarship applications outright when a family doesn't meet these requirements, the families say it would have been futile to apply without first securing an exemption, so they had no path forward except to ask the court for one.

"These families aren't asking for special treatment. They're asking Georgia to stop punishing them for their faith," said  Nathan Loyd, Staff Counsel at Thomas More Society. “The Supreme Court has held time and again that a state can’t condition public benefits on a person’s willingness to forfeit their religious exercise first. But that’s exactly what Georgia does here."

Thousands of secular families have already used the scholarship to withdraw their children from public schools and send them to private schools, including Catholic schools. Georgia's regulations already allow case-by-case exemptions from these requirements for secular applicants. Once a state opens the door to individualized exceptions, the lawsuit argues the First Amendment and Georgia's own Religious Freedom Restoration Act bar it from refusing that same exception to families for religious reasons.

“Georgia already excuses other families from these same requirements for secular reasons. But it won't do the same for a family for religious reasons. That’s a clear violation of these families’ religious liberty rights,” Loyd added.

The lawsuit notes that Georgia's own numbers undercut any argument that the requirements are essential to the program. Last year, only about $50 million of the $141 million budgeted for Promise Scholarships was spent.

"The Promise Scholarship is exactly the kind of program Georgia should be proud of, and these families simply want the chance to benefit from it like everyone else," Loyd said. "This isn't a request for new spending. All we're asking is that religious families get to do the exact same thing secular families already can."

The complaint asks the court to declare the requirements unlawful, block their enforcement against the plaintiffs, and order the Georgia Student Finance Commission to award each family a Promise Scholarship for their children. Alongside the complaint, the families filed a motion for a temporary restraining order asking the court to act before the deadline.

Read the Verified Complaint in Sands v. Green, here.  

Read the Emergency Motion for Temporary Restraining Order, here.