In 2012, a teacher at Saint Vincent de Paul School in Indiana named Emily Herx was fired solely because she chose to undergo in vitro fertilization, an increasingly common procedure that church officials consider a violation of their dogma.

Herx decided to sue both the school, which accepts voucher students, and the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese for gender discrimination. And despite the diocese’s best efforts to smear Herx by portraying her as emotionally unstable and having a possible drug problem, a jury found in her favor and the diocese has been ordered to pay Herx nearly $2 million. But there’s no guarantee that Herx has found justice: Church officials plan to appeal.

The story is an important reminder that private religious schools operate under different rules than public ones. They serve a private interest and promote religion. But if some politicians have their way, taxpayers could be forced to subsidize these schools – and their discriminatory policies.

An annual event is under way right now known as “School Choice Week.” It’s essentially a front for forces that want to privatize secondary education through voucher plans.

Saint Vincent de Paul is one of many private schools that participates in Indiana’s massive voucher program. As a result, Hoosier State taxpayers are being forced to subsidize religious organizations like this one that frequently discriminate against all sorts of groups, including women and LGBTQ persons.

Unfortunately, Herx’s tale is far from unique. Carla Hale, a longtime physical education instructor, was fired from her position at a voucher-eligible school, Bishop Watterson High School in Columbus, Ohio, after her mother’s obituary in a local newspaper mentioned Hale’s same-sex partner, thereby revealing her orientation.

Sometimes, simply supporting civil rights is enough to get a staff member fired in some Catholic schools. In Cincinnati, a Catholic school administrator named Mike Moroski was terminated in 2013 for supporting same-sex marriage on his personal blog – even though he is not gay.

And since Ohio also has a large voucher program, the school that fired Moroski could be eligible for vouchers and might be using taxpayer money to discriminate, too.

Sadly, schools that accept voucher students don’t limit their discrimination to faculty and staff. Private schools are free to discriminate against the students they accept on the basis of disability, gender, religion, economic status, or sexual orientation, and they may reject students who have a history of poor academic performance or disciplinary issues. So even if students receive a voucher, they may not find a school that will enroll them.

Even when voucher schools do choose to accept students with disabilities, they often end up discriminating against those students in the end. In Wisconsin, for example, WisconsinWatch.org, a project of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, examined vouchers in the state in 2013. They found that private schools taking part in the voucher program mostly either refuse to serve special-needs students or they accept them only as a means to game the system.

WisconsinWatch interviewed Milwaukee resident Kim Fitzer, whose daughter Trinity suffers from medical and behavioral issues. Fitzer used a voucher worth $6,442 to enroll Trinity in Northwest Catholic School for kin­dergarten during the 2011-12 academic year. In March of 2012, the school expelled Trinity, citing “continuing behavior issues” – but it kept all the money it received from her voucher because the state allows schools to do that as long as a student is enrolled through a certain date.

Religious organizations generally have the right to make hiring and firing decisions based on their beliefs – when their activities are privately funded. But the sort of narrow dogma that leads schools to fire teachers because they don’t adhere to church directives is not something that most taxpayers would want to subsidize. Nor does the First Amendment allow for this sort of public support of religious institutions. And yet, it happens in cities and states nationwide every year.

Vouchers aren’t just about discrimination. They also drain public schools of needed funds, promote racial segregation and tend to help students who already have the means to attend private school. Plus, study after study shows that they just don’t improve academic performance.

So during this national “School Choice Week,” tell political leaders that there’s one choice they ought to make: stop diverting scarce education dollars from the public schools that serve all to the private religious schools that serve few – and often discriminate while doing it.