Supreme Court blocks creation of religious public charter school
May 22 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court decided Thursday that the state of Oklahoma will not be permitted to create the first-ever religious public charter school with a deadlocked decision only a sentence in length.
The judges ended up in a 4-4 tie as Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case.
The decision, without a majority, sets no precedent and therefore leaves the question of legality in regard to whether religious schools can take part in taxpayer-funded state charter school programs unanswered.
It also means that the previous decision by the Oklahoma Supreme Court that denied a proposal by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa to launch an online Catholic school that would have been funded by taxpayers still stands.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled in June of 2024 that "Under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school. As such, a charterschool must be nonsectarian."
The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, created by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa in 2023, had said that as state funding for charter schools is generally made available to qualified organizations, the state could not discriminate based on religion.
"A ruling that Oklahoma's charter-school law unconstitutionally discriminates against religion would upend the federal [Charter Schools Program] and charter-school laws nationwide, sowing chaos and confusion for millions of charter-school students," the state Supreme Court said in its ruling.
Justice Barrett did not publicly explain her recusal, but it could be related to her ties to Notre Dame Law School, whose religious liberty clinic represents St Isidore.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond responded to the Supreme Court's decision in an X post Thursday.
"The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of my position that we should not allow taxpayer funding of radical Islamic schools here in Oklahoma. I am proud to have fought against this potential cancer in our state, and I will continue upholding the law, protecting our Christian values and defending religious liberty," Drummond said.
Gentner's reference to "radical Islamic schools" is a callback to his statement made in June of 2024 when the state Supreme Court made its ruling, when he said that "by preventing the State from sponsoring any religion at all," it would assure Oklahomans " that our tax dollars will not fund the teachings of Sharia Law or even Satanism."
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