The Supreme Court will decide if taxpayers should fund a religious charter school

The decision to weigh in on Oklahoma's St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic Charter School could end in disaster

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Well, this is bad.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would take up a case that could result in taxpayer-funded *public* Christian schools.

The case involves the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, a publicly funded charter school that Christians attempted to open in Oklahoma last year… until the state’s highest court stopped them. That 7-1 decision was a clear defense of church/state separation, with the justices saying that funding the religious school violated both the state and federal constitutions.

It wasn’t just that the state would have funded this school. The problems went far beyond that. Unlike public schools, St. Isidore of Seville would not require teachers to be certified, would not have to accept openly LGBTQ teachers, and would explicitly promote Catholic doctrine during school hours. There was also the possibility that students who became pregnant could get expelled—along with trans students just for existing—and that sex education would be omitted from the curriculum. In addition, this kind of school wouldn’t have the resources to take on special needs students.

In other words, this wasn’t a charter school that happened to be Catholic.

This was a Catholic school that wanted public funding, so they decided to call themselves a charter school.

Oklahoma’s Attorney General Gentner Drummond argued that taxpayers didn’t need to foot the bill for that when he filed a lawsuit to prevent the place from opening, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court took his side.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (screenshot via YouTube)

But then came the expected appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court where the school’s backers argued that denying them this funding amounted to religious discrimination:

The school and the charter school board came to the Supreme Court in October, asking the justices to weigh in. The school contended that the state supreme court’s ruling “unconstitutionally punished the free exercise of religion by disqualifying the religious from government aid.” What’s more, the school argued, the state supreme court circumvented the U.S. Supreme Court’s cases establishing a right to the free exercise of religion “by transmuting St. Isidore into an arm of the government”: It “reasoned that excluding St. Isidore on religious grounds raised no Free Exercise problem because St. Isidore’s contract would turn the school into a ‘surrogate of the State,’ noting that Oklahoma’s legislature had labeled the charter schools ‘public.’”

According to SCOTUSblog, the state urged the justices not to take up this case because they had no good reason to interfere. This school intended to promote its religious beliefs, and the state’s constitution doesn’t allow public funding for that, so that should be the end of the story.

But SCOTUS took it up anyway. (Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case without explaining why, though the New York Times notes that she’s “close friends with a Notre Dame law professor who has helped advise the St. Isidore team.”)

A coalition of church/state separation groups including Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the ACLU, the Education Law Center, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation issued this statement after the Court announced it would hear this case:

“The law is clear: Charter schools are public schools and must be secular and open to all students. The Oklahoma Supreme Court correctly found that the state’s approval of a religious public charter school was unlawful and unconstitutional. We urge the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm that ruling and safeguard public education, church-state separation, and religious freedom for all. Oklahoma taxpayers, including our plaintiffs, should not be forced to fund a religious public school that plans to discriminate against students and staff and indoctrinate students into one religion. Converting public schools into Sunday schools would be a dangerous sea change for our democracy.”

(Those groups had filed their own separate lawsuit to block this school from getting public funding, but that case was put on hold due to Drummond’s lawsuit.)

They have good reason to be worried, though. Given the political makeup of the Supreme Court, there’s no telling what the justices will do with this case to further destroy the wall of separation between church and state.

It’s possible that SCOTUS could rule that Oklahoma is required to fund religious education through its charter school program. If they wanted to go nuclear, they could rule that any state that funds public schools (i.e. all of them) should be required to fund religious schools, too.

For now, the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom is celebrating what they clearly see as a victory-in-waiting:

“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer. There’s great irony in state officials who claim to be in favor of religious liberty discriminating against St. Isidore because of its Catholic beliefs,” said ADF Chief Legal Counsel Jim Campbell. “The U.S. Constitution protects St. Isidore’s freedom to operate according to its faith and supports the board’s decision to approve such learning options for Oklahoma families. We’re pleased the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this case, which is of the utmost import to families and children in Oklahoma and throughout the country.”

Of course, no one was saying the Catholic school can’t “operate according to its faith.” The entire issue is whether taxpayers should be forced to fund a private religious school that serves to spread Catholic doctrine.

Non-Gentner Republican leaders in Oklahoma were also excited about what their SCOTUS allies would do, with one making a predictably insane statement:

Gov. Kevin Stitt and Oklahoma’s top education official, state Superintendent Ryan Walters, have both advocated for the school.

“I’m glad the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing the St. Isidore case,” Stitt said. “This stands to be one of the most significant religious and education freedom decisions in our lifetime. I believe our nation’s highest court will agree that denying St. Isidore’s charter based solely on its religious affiliation is flat-out unconstitutional. We’ve seen ugly religious intolerance from opponents of the education freedom movement, but I look forward to seeing our religious liberties protected both in Oklahoma and across the country.”

Walters said “the entire country has eyes on Oklahoma to support St. Isidore and end state-sponsored atheism.”

The idea that maintaining religious neutrality amounts to “state-sponsored atheism” may be one of the biggest distortions from a party that only speaks in hyperbole.

It’s not just the church/state separation crowd that should be worried about this. Religious conservatives could easily complain about how, if St. Isidore of Seville became a charter school, the state would have authority over a religious school. The Oklahoma Supreme Court even said in its ruling that “Enforcing the St. Isidore Contract would create a slippery slope and what the framers’ warned against—the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion without fear of governmental intervention.” But conservatives would rather get the cash and destroy decades of legal precedent than worry about losing their autonomy.

For what it’s worth, with Barrett out of the picture, all five conservatives on the Supreme Court would have to agree for the Oklahoma court’s decision to be reversed. A 4-4 split would leave the earlier ruling in place.

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