US EditionDivided Supreme Court rules Oklahoma can't launch a taxpayer-funded religious charter school
- In 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld a decision blocking the Catholic Church's plan to establish a virtual school named St. Isidore of Seville, ruling that it conflicted with constitutional and state legal provisions.
- The ruling followed the June 2023 state board approval and an Attorney General lawsuit citing Establishment Clause concerns and state interest in separation.
- The case involved debates over religious charter schools, school choice advocacy, and the Supreme Court's 4-4 deadlock that prevented a national precedent.
- The Supreme Court vote split evenly 4-4, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett absent and potentially decisive, leaving the Oklahoma ruling intact without a written opinion.
- The outcome blocks Oklahoma from establishing the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious public charter school and leaves the legal question unresolved nationally.
352 Articles
352 Articles
“Public” Does Not = “State” or “Government” - First Things
In its recent non-decision, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand an obtuse Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that excluded St. Isidore’s from the state charter school program. Notre Dame law professor Richard Garnett, in a fine article at Law & Liberty, explains why the Oklahoma Supremes got it wrong: The Supreme Court of Oklahoma had ruled that excluding St. Isidore did not violate the firm …
As Supreme Court rulings on religious liberty cases loom, observers see hope for challengers
The Supreme Court is expected to resolve two major religious liberty disputes in favor of the plaintiffs -- one involving the tax status of a Wisconsin charity, the other LGBTQ-themed books in public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland.
The Supreme Court's religious charter school ruling.
I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”Are you new here? Get free emails to your inbox daily. Would you rather listen? You can find our podcast here.Today’s read: 13 minutes.⛪A split Supreme Court blocks a religious charter school from receiving public funds. Plus, could …
The St. Isidore case failed, but religious education may be better off
While advocates of religious education may be frustrated with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent deadlock in St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, they may have dodged a bullet. St. Isidore is a Catholic virtual school that applied to become a charter school in Oklahoma. The state denied the application because the school sought to engage in religious instruction. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitu…
Educational Pluralism Delayed – Richard W. Garnett
On Thursday, in one of this year’s most closely watched cases, the Supreme Court of the United States either—depending on your source—delivered a stinging “setback” to the “religious right” or issued a one-line, nine-words-long order reporting that the justices had divided evenly and so, in effect, done nothing. The latter description is the correct one. The St. Isidore case presented the Court with two closely related questions: First, does the…
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