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“The Supreme Court on Wednesday was divided over a Catholic virtual charter school’s bid to become the country’s first religious charter school… The case began two years ago, when Oklahoma’s charter school board approved an application by the archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the diocese of Tulsa to establish St. Isidore of Seville, a virtual Catholic charter school…
“Gentner Drummond, the state’s Republican attorney general, went to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, asking it to invalidate the board’s contract with St. Isidore. The state supreme court agreed to do so. St. Isidore, the state court ruled, is a public school and therefore required under state law to be non-religious.” SCOTUSblog
The left urges the Court to rule against the school, arguing that taxpayers should not fund religious schools.
“The Court now has a ‘different constitutional understanding’ of whether separation of church and state is even permitted. That new understanding, [Justice] Kavanaugh suggested, is this: So long as an American can choose not to participate in a state-backed religious operation, church and state do not need to be separate…
“This approach to religion is fundamentally different from how previous generations of justices viewed the Constitution — in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), for example, the Court said that ‘no tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.’…
“In fairness, the right of citizens to choose whether to participate in religious institutions has animated the Court’s religion cases for quite a while. In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), a 5-4 Court ruled that states may voluntarily include religious schools in a private school voucher program… But Zelman merely established that government funding of religious private schools is permissible, not that it is required.”
Ian Millhiser, Vox
“The problem with Kavanaugh’s position, of course, is that Oklahoma treats religion differently because the First Amendment treats it differently, limiting its entanglement with the state. The Framers imposed this rule not out of hostility toward the faithful, but to ensure that believers of every stripe—and nonbelievers too—are not forced to support a faith that conflicts with their conscience…
“Kavanaugh does not appear to care that non-Catholic Oklahomans would be subsidizing Catholic indoctrination if St. Isidore is approved, or that non-Catholic students could face discrimination or expulsion for failing to share the school’s beliefs.”
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
“In a case of ‘be careful what you wish for,’ there are two other potential implications that religious groups may not relish… [One is that] state funding could subject religious schools to what they perceive as too much governmental intrusion into their beliefs and practices…
“Does the Catholic Church want the government telling them how to administer the sacrament of communion in a nondiscriminatory manner? Do Baptist schools want the government telling them that they have to allow students to form LGBTQ+ after-school clubs?…
“Secondly, an organization of charter schools says that if charter schools are not found to be public schools by the Supreme Court, then many, if not most, of them will lose state funding, and they will cease to exist. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly four million students attend charter schools nationwide, and declaring that charter schools are not public will result in less school choice.”
Sharon McMahon, The Preamble
The right urges the Court to rule in favor of the school, arguing that doing so will benefit students.
The right urges the Court to rule in favor of the school, arguing that doing so will benefit students.
“Although charter schools are nominally public schools, the legal issue before the court isn’t concerned with traditional public schools. They are operated by school districts. They are unquestionably government actors and therefore must be secular. Neither party in the case disputes this. Charter schools, however, are privately operated and designed entities, freed from government control to promote choice for families…
“The Supreme Court has made clear that the First Amendment prohibits religious discrimination in government programs that enlist private organizations to advance public goals… A decision suggesting that states can transform private actors into governmental ones by slapping the label ‘public’ on them would also threaten the autonomy and religious liberty of private organizations that receive government funds to advance a range of public goals, including poverty alleviation, social services, healthcare and many others.”
Nicole Stelle Garnett, Wall Street Journal
“If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the charter school board and St. Isidore, Oklahoma parents will have more education options for their children. Children will only attend St. Isidore if their parents choose it. If parents would rather send their child to a traditional public school, they can do so. If they want to sign their child up for a secular charter school, they can do so…
“The private choices of parents will determine the amount of state funding St. Isidore receives. If no parent chooses St. Isidore, it won't receive those public funds. Parents know their children best, and if Oklahoma parents choose St. Isidore, Oklahoma law shouldn't stand in the way of that simply because the school—which accepts all students regardless of their faith—happens to be Catholic.”
Jim Campbell, Newsweek
“The [Oklahoma] attorney general voiced concerns that, should St. Isidore be approved, it would open the floodgates to allow extreme religious ideologies to get state funding, like schools teaching sharia law or satanism. Never mind that private schools advocating the replacement of our constitutional system with Islamic law or teaching pentagram drawing are almost impossible to find in the United States…
”Never mind that the charter school board’s criteria are very high — high enough to filter out substandard schools. And never mind that Oklahoma charter schools get funded only if Oklahoma families and students choose to go there. Drummond’s views are directly at odds with how religious freedom in our country is supposed to work. Our Founding Fathers saw the wisdom in promoting a society that doesn’t suppress religious liberty out of fear that extremists will slip through the cracks.”
Philip Sechler, National Review
