Split Supreme Court blocks taxpayer-funded religious charter school

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The Supreme Court blocked a Catholic bid for a religious charter school.
• A 4-4 ruling upheld a lower court's decision against St. Isidore School.
• The case highlighted tensions between religious rights and constitutional limits on religion.

WASHINGTON — A split U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday blocked a bid led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a major case involving religious rights in American education.

With conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself from the case, the 4-4 ruling left intact a lower court's decision that blocked the establishment of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. Oklahoma's top court found that the proposed school would violate the Constitution's First Amendment limits on government involvement in religion.

Barrett's decision not to participate in the case left eight justices rather than the full slate of nine to decide the outcome. Barrett did not publicly explain her recusal, but she is a former professor at Notre Dame Law School, which represents the school's organizers.

When the Supreme Court is evenly divided, the lower court's decision stands. The justices did not provide a rationale for their action in the unsigned ruling, as is typical in the rare instances when they deadlock.

The outcome was hailed by advocates for the separation of church and state, who viewed the proposed school as a violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause, which restricts government officials from establishing or endorsing any particular religion or promoting religion over nonreligion.

Backers of the school expressed disappointment but suggested their legal effort was far from over. The issue of the establishment of a religious charter school could return to the court in the future to be heard before all its members.

The Supreme Court while under the leadership of conservative Chief Justice John Roberts has recognized broader religious rights in a series of rulings in recent years, often siding with Christian claimants.

Set up as alternatives to traditional public schools, charter schools typically operate under private management and often feature small class sizes, innovative teaching styles or a particular academic focus. Charter schools are considered public schools under Oklahoma law and draw funding from the state government.

St. Isidore, planned as a joint effort by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and Diocese of Tulsa, sought to offer virtual learning from kindergarten through high school. Its plan to integrate religion into its curriculum stood to make it the first religious charter school in the United States.

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, meaning Barrett's absence may have been key to the outcome in the case.

During April 30 arguments in the St. Isidore case, divisions between the three liberal justices and the conservative justices who participated were laid bare as they explored the tensions between the First Amendment's two religion clauses. In addition to the establishment clause, the free exercise clause protects the right to practice one's religion freely, without government interference.

On balance, the five conservative justices who heard the case signaled sympathy during the arguments toward the proposed St. Isidore school, though Roberts struck a note of ambivalence, posing tough questions to lawyers on both sides.

Roberts told James Campbell, a lawyer for the state's charter school board, that the Supreme Court's religious liberty rulings in recent years involved limited state benefits, such as playground improvements, tuition and tax credits.

"This does strike me as a much more comprehensive involvement," Roberts said.

The legal defeat for the proposed religious charter school caught some court watchers by surprise on Thursday.

"For Christians to lose before the Roberts Court is practically unheard of," said University of Miami School of Law professor Caroline Mala Corbin, who specializes in law and religion. "Although strictly speaking, it was 4-4."

'A resounding victory'

Oklahoma's Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond sued in October 2023 to block St. Isidore in a legal action filed at the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Drummond called Thursday's decision "a resounding victory for religious liberty and for the foundational principles that have guided our nation since its founding."

Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt backed the proposed school, as did Republican President Donald Trump's administration.

Opponents have said religious charter schools would force taxpayers to support religious indoctrination. Establishing them also could undermine nondiscrimination principles, they argued, because religious charter schools might seek to bar employees and even students who do not adhere to doctrinal teachings.

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Thursday's outcome "safeguards public education and upholds the separation of church and state."

The Oklahoma charter school board in June 2023 approved the plan to create St. Isidore in a 3-2 vote.

Oklahoma's top court, in a 6-2 ruling last year, blocked the school. It classified St. Isidore as a "governmental entity" that would act as "a surrogate of the state," and ruled that the proposal ran afoul of the establishment clause. The First Amendment generally constrains the government but not private entities.

St. Isidore, the court wrote, would "require students to spend time in religious instruction and activities, as well as permit state spending in direct support of the religious curriculum and activities within St. Isidore — all in violation of the establishment clause."

School organizers argued that St. Isidore is a private organization, not an arm of the government, and that Oklahoma's refusal to establish the Catholic charter school because it is religious is discrimination under the free exercise clause.

"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, and we will continue our work to protect this vital freedom for parents and students," said Campbell, who is chief legal counsel at the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom and represented the school board.

In 2022, the court ruled in favor of two Christian families in their challenge to Maine's tuition-assistance program that had excluded private religious schools. In 2020, it endorsed Montana tax credits that helped pay for students to attend private religious schools, siding with three mothers of Christian school students.

In 2017, the court ruled for Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Missouri, declaring that churches and other religious entities cannot be flatly denied public aid based on their religious status.

Contributing: Andrew Chung

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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