Florida's teachers union launched a legal offensive to block legislation passed last spring that expands the state's corporate school-voucher program, the Florida Education Association (FEA) announced Wednesday. Since the controversial education law was passed in an unconstitutional manner, they claim that it should not be implemented.

The new law, called the Career and Professional Education Act, or SB 850, creates a new program that provides funding for disabled students to purchase private tutoring, educational materials and other services, the Daily Caller reported.

The bill, which initially offered vouchers to help low-income families pay for private schooling, has now expanded the state's Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program to include funding for higher income levels. Additionally, prior to the law, a family of four had to earn less than $43,568 to qualify. Now, the maximum income for such a family is $62,010, and increase of nearly $19,000.

Basically, the lawsuit from the Florida Education Association takes aim at the way SB 850 got passed into law. Some of the bill's more contentious provisions, including the voucher expansion and the scholarship accounts, started out as stand-alone proposals that met resistance in the Legislature. They were later combined into a sweeping education bill on the second-to-last day of the legislative session, giving lawmakers little time to review the proposal and citizens virtually no chance to weigh in, Miami Herald reported. Despite loud objections from the union, parent groups, the NAACP and the League of Women Voters last month, Gov. Rick Scott signed Senate Bill 850.

The lawsuit filed in Leon Circuit Court is being brought by Tom Faasse, a high school social studies teacher from Lee County, who said he planned to use the example to teach a lesson to his students about "what not to do" when passing a law. "This was a sneaky way for the legislative leaders to enact measures that had already failed," said Florida Education Association Vice President Joanne McCall. "It is an outrage that corporate voucher expansion was tacked into an unrelated bill and slipped into law."

Although every part of the bill did involve education in some manner, the FEA plans to challenge on the grounds that the bill violated a Florida constitutional prohibition on "logrolling," or passing bills that involve multiple unrelated subjects. "Is this any way to pass laws?" Faasse said in a statement released to The Daily Caller News Foundation. "The people of Florida should expect that laws are clearly expressed and properly vetted and that laws that failed to pass shouldn't be tacked onto unrelated legislation at the 11th hour."

Supporters of the law, including the Foundation for Excellence in Education, an advocacy group founded by former Gov. Jeb Bush, accuse Florida's teachers of turning their backs on children with autism, Down's syndrome, and other disabilities. "This is a new low for the FEA," said Foundation president Patricia Levesque in a statement. "It is shameful that they would spend teachers' hard-earned dollars to block opportunities for our most vulnerable students."

A spokesman for Scott, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, declined to comment directly on the complaint. "The governor was proud to sign this legislation that creates personal learning accounts for our special needs students where funding can be spent on critical services or rolled over so they can save for college," spokesman John Tupps said.