Perspective: The St. Isidore stalemate is a missed opportunity in America's education wars

Yahoo

24-05-2025

The Supreme Court's 4-4 deadlock in the case of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School represents far more than a procedural hiccup — it's a perfect encapsulation of America's paralysis when it comes to the explosive intersection of religion, education and public funding.
By splitting evenly on whether Oklahoma could fund the nation's first religious charter school, the court avoided making hard choices about fundamental constitutional principles. But this non-decision may prove more consequential than any ruling, leaving educators, policymakers and families navigating an increasingly treacherous legal landscape with no clear map.
At its core, the St. Isidore case pitted two bedrock constitutional principles against each other in ways that illuminate the broader culture wars consuming American education. The proposed Catholic virtual school sought to operate as a charter school while maintaining an explicitly religious curriculum, complete with Masses, instruction on Catholic doctrine, and the freedom to hire based on religious preference. This wasn't subtle religious influence— it would be unapologetically sectarian education funded by taxpayer dollars.
The school's supporters, including the Oklahoma charter school board, framed this as simple equal treatment under law. They pointed to recent Supreme Court victories where the justices ruled that states cannot exclude religious institutions from generally available public benefits solely because of their religious character. If Oklahoma already funds charter schools 'focused on science, engineering, math, fine arts, language immersion, and tribal identity,' they argued, excluding religious institutions amounts to discrimination against people of faith.
This argument has gained considerable traction in recent years as conservative legal organizations have systematically challenged what they see as hostility toward religion in public life. The Supreme Court's increasingly religion-friendly approach under its conservative majority has emboldened advocates who view strict church-state separation not as constitutional principle but as anti-religious bias. For them, St. Isidore represented the next logical step: if religious institutions can receive indirect government funding through voucher programs, why not direct funding through charter school contracts?
But Oklahoma's Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, made an equally compelling case from the opposite direction. Charter schools, he argued, are fundamentally public institutions created by state law, funded with taxpayer dollars, subject to state curriculum standards and required to serve all students regardless of background. They can be shuttered by the state for poor performance, their boards must follow open-meetings laws, and their teachers can join state retirement plans.
In Drummond's view, allowing St. Isidore to proceed would create something unprecedented in American law: a government-funded Catholic school operating under direct state contract — a clear violation of the Constitution's prohibition on state-sponsored religion.
The case exposed deep fractures not just between religious liberty advocates and church-state separationists, but within the school choice movement itself. Mainstream charter school advocates found themselves opposing St. Isidore, worried that mixing religion with charter schools would change what makes charters work —their identity as public schools that offer alternatives to traditional districts while staying accountable to taxpayers.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett's decision not to participate — likely due to her close friendship with a school advisor — created the mathematical possibility for this deadlock, but the 4-4 split reveals something more significant about the court's internal dynamics. Legal experts speculate that Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three liberal justices in opposing the school, despite his authorship of pro-religious liberty opinions in recent years. If true, this suggests that even some conservative justices recognize limits to how far the pendulum should swing toward religious accommodation.
The idea that the government must fund religious education represents such a dramatic departure from traditional American church-state relations that it may have pushed too far even for justices generally sympathetic to religious liberty claims. The distinction between allowing religious institutions to participate in neutral government programs and requiring the government to fund explicitly religious instruction may prove to be a bridge too far for the court's swing votes.
This deadlock also highlights the complexity of defining public versus private institutions in an era of increasing public-private partnerships. Charter schools exist in a constitutional gray area —publicly funded but privately operated, subject to some state oversight but granted significant autonomy. This ambiguity, which has fueled the charter school movement's explosive growth, becomes deeply problematic when fundamental constitutional principles collide.
The broader implications extend well beyond charter schools. The line between public and private becomes increasingly blurred as government partnerships with religious organizations expand across American social policy.
During oral arguments, Justice Samuel Alito focused on comments made by Drummond opposing St. Isidore's application, when the attorney general noted that approving the school would mean the board would also have to approve religious charter schools operated by minority religions.
Alito suggested this showed 'hostility' to certain faiths, referencing how the court had previously ruled against government officials who showed bias against religious believers. Alito also worried that if religious charter schools were deemed government entities, it could affect other faith-based services that receive government funding, like Catholic Social Services or Catholic Charities.
The justices grappled with hypothetical scenarios that revealed the complexity of the issue. Justice Elena Kagan described a potential school in a Hasidic community in New York that wanted to adopt a curriculum focused on ancient religious texts, with instruction in Yiddish or Hebrew. Would New York have to approve this charter school, she wondered, even though the curriculum would be dramatically different from standard public education? The state wanted charter schools to offer flexibility, but a ruling for St. Isidore could require funding all kinds of religious schools.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt's immediate response to the ruling —dismissing it as a 'non-decision' and vowing to keep fighting —signals that this issue is far from settled. 'There will be another case just like this one and Justice Barrett will break the tie,' he said in a statement. 'This is far from a settled issue.' Legal experts across the spectrum agree the question will return to the court, likely within the next few years, when Barrett will presumably participate and potentially cast the deciding vote.
The stakes will be even higher then, as a definitive ruling could reshape not just education policy but the fundamental relationship between religious institutions and government funding. As one legal expert noted, if the court rules for religious charter schools, it could mean that federal law governing charter schools and virtually all state charter school laws would be unconstitutional, because they require charter schools to be non-religious.
Until that moment arrives, the St. Isidore deadlock represents a missed opportunity for clarity at a crucial juncture in American education and religious liberty. The court avoided making controversial precedent, but it also left critical questions unanswered about whether America's commitment to religious pluralism requires funding religious education or whether constitutional principles demand maintaining secular public schools. The culture wars over education will continue to rage with no clear rules of engagement and no end in sight, ensuring that communities, courts, and consciences remain divided for years to come.
Asma T. Uddin writes on legal issues on her Substack 'Rights & Ruminations' and on love and health on 'The Architecture of Care.'