The Supreme Court will hear debate on Wednesday about the fate of the nation's first religious charter school held in Oklahoma. It aims to use government money to teach a curriculum infused by Catholic doctrine.
In previous cases in Maine and Montana, the court said that once they decide to create a program to help pay for private schools, they must allow them to choose a religious school. The main question in the new case is whether the First Amendment will allow or require the sponsorship of and funding religious charter schools, a public school with considerable autonomy.
St. Isidor, the Oklahoma School, Seville Catholic Virtual School, is run by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, and aims to incorporate Catholic teaching into all aspects of its work.
Judgments in favour of the school could affect laws in 45 other states that approve charter schools. It would also blur the lines established in previous Supreme Court cases that distinguished government money provided to parents to spend on private schools, including religious schools.
The conflict is the third major incident dealing with religion that is discussed before justice for about a month. In March, the court appeared poised to determine that a Catholic charity in Wisconsin had the right to exempt tax, which was rejected by a state court on the grounds that the charity's activities were primarily unreligious. Last week, the court signaled that religiously objected parents are likely to determine that picture books containing LGBTQ themes can extract children from the ranks being discussed.
After the Oklahoma Charter School Board approved a proposal to open St. Isidor, a Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond, called for it to stop. Drummond said religious public schools violate the First Amendment ban on the establishment of religious governments and the prohibition of the state constitution, which spends public funds to support the religious system.
He said it crossed the line drawn by Prime Minister William H. Lanequist in a 2002 Supreme Court decision that distinguished from “distinguishing government programs that provide government programs that provide governmental assistance directly to religious schools,” as opposed to “responding to religious schools,” as in contrast to “government assistance reaches religious schools as a result of a genuine independent choice of individuals.”
St. Isidor's lawyer retorted the court saying he “want to provide another education.” option For Oklahomans, and no student is forced to attend St. Isidor. “The school will only receive student and state funding through the private choice of the family.”
The school said it would welcome students who say “have no different faiths or beliefs.” Oklahoma Charter Schools weren't that categorized about teachers, saying they were free to adopt their own HR policies at their own pace.
The state's Supreme Court ruled against the schools, with the majority saying it would “create slippery slopes” that could lead to “destroying the freedom of Oklahomans who practice religion without fear of government intervention.”
“St. Isidor is a public charter school,” the majority said, noting that state laws allowing such schools require that they be non-denominational. “In both state and federal law, the majority ruled that “the state is not permitted to establish or fund St. Isidor.”
In its latest decision from the US Supreme Court on 2022's Carson v. McKinn's government support, the majority ruled that Maine could not exclude religious schools from the national teaching program.
But Secretary John G. Roberts Jr., who wrote for the majority, said “Maine may provide strictly secular education in public schools.”
On the contrary, Judge Stephen G. Breyer, who retired that year, said even Maine's programs, which are limited to private schools, were problematic.
“If members of minority religions have too few supporters to establish schools, they may see fraud in the fact that only those in a more popular religion can use state money for religious education,” wrote Judge Breyer. “Taxpayers may be upset that they have to fund the spread of religious beliefs that they don't share and disagree.”
Judge Amy Coney Barrett rejected herself from the Oklahoma Charter School Board v. Drummond, 24-394 Oklahoma case, but has not given a reason. She is a professor of law at Notre Dame, whose religious freedom clinic represents the charter school and is a close friend of Nicole Garnett, a professor who supported St. Isidor.
