Background
In 2023, the Vermont Legislature approved an amendment to the City of Burlington’s charter allowing noncitizen legal residents to vote in local City of Burlington and Burlington School District elections, provided they meet enumerated criteria including lawful permanent residency, Burlington residency, and taking the Voter’s Oath. The amendment expressly does not affect noncitizens’ eligibility to vote in state or federal elections. Two Burlington-registered U.S. citizens challenged the amendment as applied specifically to votes on the annual Burlington School District education budget and elections for the Board of School Commissioners.
Plaintiffs sought a declaratory judgment and injunction, arguing that although Burlington’s school elections are nominally local, they are statewide elections in substance because the Burlington school budget is funded through Vermont’s State Education Fund. Under that theory, school election votes “directly impact the State budget” and “the financial interests of Vermonters statewide,” making them subject to the citizenship requirement in Chapter II, § 42 of the Vermont Constitution. The City moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim, and the State of Vermont intervened in defense of the charter amendment.
The civil division granted the motion and dismissed the complaint with prejudice in February 2025, reasoning that school elections address “distinctly local matters” — who will serve on the school board and whether to support a locally recommended budget — and that the extra-municipal fiscal consequences plaintiffs emphasized did not transform those elections into statewide ones. Plaintiffs appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court of Vermont affirmed, and used the case to sharpen the local/statewide election distinction it first drew in Ferry v. City of Montpelier, 2023 VT 4. The court articulated a two-part test: an election is properly local when the question voted on (1) has been delegated by the Legislature to the locality, and (2) that delegation is lawful. Conversely, an election is statewide — and thus subject to § 42’s citizenship requirement — when the question either has not been delegated to local government or cannot lawfully be delegated. Critically, the court rejected plaintiffs’ argument that extra-municipal fiscal effects, standing alone, can convert a local election into a statewide one.
Applying that framework, the court found the Legislature has expressly and lawfully delegated authority over school administration — including budget approval and school board elections — to local school districts, citing multiple statutory provisions. Plaintiffs did not dispute the existence of that delegation, and they did not adequately plead a claim that the delegation was unlawful (e.g., that education funding decisions cannot constitutionally be delegated to municipalities). Because Burlington’s school elections involve matters the Legislature has lawfully assigned to the locality, those elections are local elections to which § 42’s citizenship requirement does not apply.
The court also rejected the argument that Brigham v. State, 166 Vt. 246 (1997), renders school funding a purely statewide matter. While Brigham confirmed the State’s constitutional obligation to ensure equitable education statewide, it expressly recognized that the State may delegate to local districts “the authority to finance and administer the schools within their borders.” The post-Brigham State Education Fund formula reflects the Legislature’s own policy choice to incorporate local budget votes — a choice the Legislature remains free to modify — and does not elevate local school elections to statewide status.
Key Takeaways
- The test for distinguishing local from statewide elections in Vermont turns on governmental authority, not fiscal or policy impact: an election is local when the subject matter has been lawfully delegated to the municipality; it is statewide when the subject matter remains under exclusive state authority or cannot lawfully be delegated.
- Burlington’s noncitizen-voting charter amendment survives as-applied constitutional challenge to school board and school budget elections; Chapter II, § 42’s citizenship requirement is inapplicable to those elections.
- Extra-municipal effects — including state-level funding consequences — do not by themselves transform a local election into a statewide one subject to § 42; the delegation of authority, not the breadth of downstream effects, is the controlling inquiry.
- A delegation-doctrine challenge (arguing the Legislature cannot lawfully hand school-funding votes to localities) remains a theoretically distinct claim, but it was not properly pleaded or preserved here and the court declined to address it.
Why It Matters
This decision extends and clarifies Ferry v. City of Montpelier by providing Vermont’s first articulated doctrinal test for sorting local from statewide elections. By anchoring the analysis in delegated governmental authority rather than in an election’s economic or policy reach, the court forecloses a broad argument — applicable far beyond noncitizen voting — that any locally decided question with significant statewide fiscal consequences must be treated as a statewide election. The ruling effectively green-lights other Vermont municipalities that have adopted or may adopt similar noncitizen-voting charter provisions for local and school elections.
For practitioners, the decision signals that future challengers to noncitizen voting in local elections will need to mount a delegation-doctrine claim — arguing that the Legislature constitutionally cannot vest localities with authority over the relevant subject matter — rather than relying on the magnitude of the vote’s statewide effects. That is a considerably harder constitutional argument, and the court’s emphasis on Vermont’s long history of distinct local and statewide voter pools suggests it would face a steep climb.