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Thu, 22 May 2025 14:14:14 -0700
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Supreme Court blocks Catholic charter school in big setback for religion advocates

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/22/supreme-court-religious-charter-school/83788963007/

Supreme Court blocks Catholic charter school in big setback for religion advocates
Portrait of Maureen GroppeMaureen Groppe
USA TODAY
 
WASHINGTON − A divided Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the creation of the nation's first religious charter school, a major loss for those advocating a
greater role for religion in public life.

The court split 4-4 over whether to allow St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School, keeping in place the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision that a religious
charter school would violate the Constitution’s clause aimed at keeping religion separate from government.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not participate in the decision, leaving the nine-member court evenly divided. Although she didn't give a reason, Barrett is close
friends with the Notre Dame Law School professor who was an early legal adviser to the Catholic Church in Oklahoma, which wanted to open St. Isidore.


The court issued its one sentence decision announcing the deadlock three weeks after hearing oral arguments. The announcement did not include how each of the
participating justices voted.

Because neither side had a majority, no precedent was established by its decision.

Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal advocacy group that defended the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board’s approval of St. Isidore, called
the court’s deadlock disappointing but noted the justices can revisit the issue in the future.


“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer,” Jim Campbell, the group’s chief legal counsel, said in a
statement.

The Catholic Church’s leaders in Oklahoma said they are “exploring other options for offering a virtual Catholic education to all persons in the state.”

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said the decision is a “crucial, if narrow, win for constitutional principles.”

“A publicly funded religious charter school would have obliterated the wall of separation between state and church,” Gaylor said in a statement. “We’re
relieved that, at least for now, the First Amendment still means what it says.”

More: Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from big religious charter school Supreme Court case
The U.S. Supreme Court is shown March 17, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Case put First Amendment's religious clauses in tension
During oral arguments, the court's conservative majority seemed sympathetic to the Catholic Church’s proposal, which would have been a major expansion of the
use of taxpayer money for religious education.

But one of the five conservative justices who participated in the case eventually sided with the three liberal justices concerned about the erosion of the
separation of church and state.
 
Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to be the key vote, indicating that he saw religious charter schools as a more complex situation than those in which the
court has steadily expanded the use of public funds for faith-based schools.

The case put in conflict the First Amendment's prohibition of the establishment of religion against its protections for the free exercise of religion.

In some recent cases where those portions of the Constitution have been in tension, the Supreme Court came down on the side of protecting religious exercise,
expanding the role of religion in public life.

Under the same reasoning, the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa said they should be able to operate a K-12 charter school even though the
curriculum would include religious instruction.

Oklahoma's governing body for charter schools voted 3-2 to approve the church’s application. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond sued the governing
body, arguing the charter school board’s contract with the church’s nonprofit corporation was illegal. 

An ornate stained glass window at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Menasha, Wisconsin.
Oklahoma attorney general warned of `chaos and confusion'
The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled 6-2 last year that charter schools – which use taxpayer money but have private operators − are public schools and state law
requires public education to be secular.

“Oklahoma’s charter schools bear all of the hallmarks of a public school identified by this Court and more,” Drummond, a Republican, told the U.S. Supreme
Court, when he urged them not to get involved.

That’s why 46 states, including Oklahoma, and the federal government define charter schools as public schools, he said.

 If Oklahoma’s requirement that charter schools be both public and nonsectarian is unconstitutional, his office argued, then so are everyone else’s – a
result that would create “chaos and confusion for millions of charter-school students.”

Catholic Church said charter schools aren't `public'
Both the state’s charter school board and the nonprofit created by the Catholic dioceses asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in. 

They argued that charter schools aren’t “public,” because that terms applies only to the fact that charter schools are free to students and funded through
taxpayer dollars.

Charter schools retain enough independence from the state to keep it from being a government entity, they say. And once the state allowed private entities to
operate charter schools, blocking the Catholic Church from doing so would unconstitutionally discriminate against religion.   

Because no student has to attend the school, the government is not imposing religion on anyone, they argued.

Demonstrators rally outside the Supreme Court on April 30, 2025, as the justices hear oral arguments in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond. The
court’s conservative majority seemed sympathetic to the Catholic Church’s bid to create the nation’s first religious charter school in Oklahoma, a
potentially major expansion of the use of taxpayer money for religious education.
Trump administration backed religious charter school
Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department changed its position that charter schools act like government entities. The court granted Trump’s
solicitor general time during the oral arguments to make its case that Oklahoma can’t bar religious charter schools.

Oklahoma’s governor and attorney general – both Republicans – were on opposite sides of the issue.


Drummond, said allowing the Catholic charter school would “open the floodgates and force taxpayers to fund all manner of religious indoctrination, including
radical Islam or even the Church of Satan.”

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt criticized what he called Drummond’s “open hostility against religion.”

Gov. Kevin Stitt at the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber's State Spotlight breakfast Wednesday, March 12, 2025.
Charter school alliance called case an `existential threat'
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools had warned a win for St. Isidore would be an “existential threat not just to the fabric of public charter
schools, but to their continued existence.” If charter schools were considered private, not public, that would jeopardize the funding of charter schools in
states that ban public funding for private schools, they told the Supreme Court.

Some states might have been unable or unwilling to sponsor private charter schools, which would stifle public school innovation, the association said.

"With this legal clarity, we can move forward with renewed focus on expanding access to high-quality public charter schools for every family nationwide,"
Starlee Coleman, the group's president, said in a statement after the decision.


More religion clause decisions are coming
The case was just one of three cases about the First Amendment's religion clauses the court agreed to hear this year.

A decision is pending on whether Maryland parents who object to storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters should be able to get their children excused from elementary
school classrooms when the controversial reading materials are being used.

And the court is also deciding a dispute over an employment tax exemption for a Wisconsin Catholic charitable organization – a case that could affect how
easily tax exemptions are granted for any operation with a religious affiliation.
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