Supreme Court to decide if public charter schools can be religious
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Friday said it will decide whether Oklahoma can create the nation’s first religious charter school in a case that could continue a streak of rulings in recent years permitting taxpayer funds to be used for faith-based programs.
The case is also notable because the state’s Republican governor and attorney general had opposing positions on funding the school.
The U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from establishing a religion but also says the government cannot prohibit people from freely exercising 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, blurring the line separating church and state.
In 2022, the court said Maine couldn’t exclude religious schools from an indirect aid program based on the schools’ religious use of the funds.
In 2020, the court said a Montana scholarship program could not exclude religious schools if the program was open to any private schools.
In 2017, the court backed a church’s challenge to its exclusion from a Missouri grant program to resurface playgrounds.
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.
But the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled 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,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, told the U.S. Supreme Court, urging them not to get involved.
Drummond has 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, a Republican who backs the charter school, filed a brief criticizing the attorney general’s “open hostility against religion.”
After the court agreed to hear the case, Stitt said it "stands to be one of the most significant religious and education freedom decisions in our lifetime."
"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," he said in a statement.
The proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School had been narrowly approved in 2023 by a state governing board for charter schools. Attorneys for the board, which is represented by the conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, told the justices they should step in because “religious parents are being penalized for seeking to exercise their religion.”
Their appeal, as well as a separate one filed by the Catholic Church, had the backing of multiple conservative and religious groups and eight conservative states. The states said they need clarity from the Supreme Court about how charter schools can operate.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools opposed the creation of St. Isidore. Public charter schools are joint undertakings with the state and must accept the rights and responsibilities that come with that, the group told the Supreme Court,
The case will probably be argued in the spring with a decision expected by summer.
(This story was updated with new information.)
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court to decide if public charter schools can be religious