Supreme Court Lets Decision Stand Banning State-Funded Charter School
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that taxpayer money cannot be used to subsidize a religious-oriented charter school in Oklahoma.
The split decision allows a lower court ruling to stand that said tax money for religious schools violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
Until the court intervened, Oklahoma planned to allow state funding for the nation’s first religious charter school. The curriculum at St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would have included studying the lives of saints and the Ten Commandments.
The Supreme Court split 4-4 with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself. The court gave no explanation.
Supreme Court cases that split evenly have the effect of allowing a lower court’s decision to stand.
In this case, the Oklahoma Supreme Court sided with a group of taxpayers in saying the charter school is a public entity and therefore is subject to the same laws as other governmental entities. As a result, they cannot advocate for religious doctrine that entangles the government in confusion between church and state, the court said.
Oklahoma’s virtual charter board approved the school in 2023.
The state and Supreme Court decisions were based heavily on a provision of the U.S. Constitution that says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” A similar Oklahoma state constitution provision forbids “sectarian” control of government entities.
The plaintiffs objected to their tax money funding a public charter school that they said would discriminate against students and families based on their religious affiliation, their sexual orientation and that would not commit to adequately serving disabled students.
The school also planned to show a preference for hiring Catholic teachers. It would have had an initial enrollment of as many as 500 students.
In addition to required religion courses, Catholic doctrine would have been incorporated into other subjects.
Science classes would have taught about contributions from Catholics, like Copernicus and Galileo. Literature classes would have assigned readings such as “Don Quixote” and a poetry collection by Pope John Paul II titled “The Place Within.”
A second consequence of the evenly split Supreme Court decision is a limit on the reach of the ruling.
Because there was no majority in the decision, it does not set a nationwide precedent. It applies only to the Oklahoma case.
The decision does not resolve the larger question of whether the First Amendment allows other states to directly fund religious charter schools. It leaves intact previous Supreme Court rulings that allow tax-funded vouchers to pay tuition at religious schools.
Despite the decision’s limited scope, it provoked strongly worded comments from critics or supporters of religious public education.
“The very idea of a religious public school is a constitutional oxymoron,” said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “The Supreme Court’s ruling affirms that a religious school can’t be a public school and a public school can’t be religious.”
The conservative religious advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom described the court’s ruling as an infringement on educational preferences.
“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Chief Legal Counsel Jim Campbell in a statement.
He pledged to revisit issues in the case in later legal action because of the lack of a precedent from the 4-4 decision.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has been clear that when the government creates programs and invites groups to participate, it can’t single out religious groups for exclusion,” Campbell said.
Barrett’s recusal led to the Supreme Court’s deadlock. She did not explain her reasons but it appears to be tied to her former role as a faculty member at Notre Dame Law School and its religious liberties legal clinic, which advised St. Isidore in the lawsuit.
The consolidated cases are Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board et al. v. Drummond and St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond in the U.S. Supreme Court.
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