Can public money flow to Catholic charter school? The Supreme Court will
decide
[April 29, 2025]
By SEAN MURPHY and MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Catholic Church in Oklahoma wants taxpayers to
fund an online charter school that “is faithful to the teachings of
Jesus Christ.” The Supreme Court could well approve.
St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would be the nation's
first religious charter school. A ruling from the high court allowing
public money to flow directly to a religious school almost certainly
would lead to others.
Opponents warn it would blur the separation between church and state,
sap money from public schools and possibly upend the rules governing
charter schools in almost every state.
The court hears arguments Wednesday in one of the term's most closely
watched cases.
The case comes to the court amid efforts, mainly in conservative-led
states, to insert religion into public schools. Those include a
challenged Louisiana requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted in
classrooms and a mandate from Oklahoma’s state schools superintendent
that the Bible be placed in public school classrooms.
Conservative justices in recent years have delivered a series of
decisions allowing public money to be spent at religious institutions,
leading liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor to lament that the court
“continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state
that the Framers fought to build.”
The justices are reviewing an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision last year
in which a lopsided majority invalidated a state board’s approval of an
application filed jointly by two Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma.
The K-12 online school had planned to start classes for its first 200
enrollees last fall, with part of its mission to evangelize its students
in the Catholic faith.
Oklahoma’s high court determined the board’s approval violated the First
Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from
making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”
The state board and the school, backed by an array of Republican-led
states and religious and conservative groups, argue that the court
decision violates a different part of the First Amendment that protects
religious freedom. The Free Exercise Clause has been the basis of the
recent Supreme Court decisions.
“A State need not subsidize private education,” Chief Justice John
Roberts wrote in one of those decisions in 2020. “But once a State
decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely
because they are religious.”
The case has divided some of the state’s Republican leaders, with Gov.
Kevin Stitt and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters
supporting the concept of using public funds for religious schools,
while Attorney General Gentner Drummond has opposed the idea and sued to
overturn the virtual charter school board’s approval of St. Isidore.
A key issue in the case is whether the school is public or private.
Charter schools are deemed public in Oklahoma and the other 45 states
and the District of Columbia where they operate.
They are free and open to all. Just under 4 million American
schoolchildren, about 8%, are enrolled in charter schools.
“Charter schools no doubt offer important educational innovations, but
they bear all the classic indicia of public schools,” lawyers for
Drummond wrote in a Supreme Court filing.
Those include that they receive state funding, must abide by
antidiscrimination laws and must submit to oversight of curriculum and
testing. But the schools also are run by independent boards that are not
part of local public school systems.
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The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City is seen on Thursday, April 17, 2025
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)
“Charter schools are called public schools, but they’re totally
different entities,” said Nicole Garnett, a University of Notre Dame
law professor who is a leading proponent of publicly funded
religious charter schools. Other Notre Dame professors are part of
the St. Isidore legal team.
If the court finds the school is public, or a “state actor,” it
could lead to a ruling against St. Isidore. If instead it determines
that the school is private, the court is more likely to see this
case as it did the earlier ones in which it found discrimination
against religious institutions.
That the court even agreed to take on the issue now might suggest
that a majority is inclined to side with St. Isidore.
The Oklahoma court is the only one that has ruled on religious
charter schools and only eight justices are hearing the case.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself without explanation.
Barrett previously taught law at Notre Dame and is close friends
with Garnett.
The current court is very familiar with private and, especially,
religious education. Six justices attended Catholic schools as
children and almost all the children of the justices go or went to
private schools, including some religious ones.
Walters, the state schools superintendent, sees the St. Isidore case
as “the next frontier” in school choice for parents. He has been an
unabashed critic of the separation of church and state and sought to
infuse more religion into public schools.
“I see it very clearly, that there’s been a war on Christianity and
our schools have been at the epicenter of that,” said Walters, a
former high school history teacher elected in 2022 on a platform of
fighting “woke ideology” in public schools and banning certain books
from school libraries.
“We’re going to give parents more rights in education than anywhere
in the country, and that means a free ability to choose the school
of your choice, whether it’s a religious education, whether it’s a
charter school, public school, home school, all of the above.”
The idea of using public money to fund religious schools is
antithetical to the Constitution, said Rachel Laser, president and
CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
“This is religious public education, fully and directly funded by
taxpayers. It’s as abject a violation of religious freedom as they
come, because it forces taxpayers to fund the heart of religion,
religious education for religion that’s not their own,” Laser said.
A group of Oklahoma parents, faith leaders and a public education
nonprofit that also sued to block the school argue that religious
charter schools in their state would lead to a drop in funding for
rural public schools.
St. Isidore would lead to other religious charter schools, said
Erika Wright, a mother whose two school-age children attend a rural
school district in Cleveland County. "And all of those schools would
be pulling from the same limited pot of money that we have for our
current brick-and-mortar schools across the state.”
A decision is expected by early summer.
___
Murphy reported from Oklahoma City.
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