Latest news with #AmyConeyBarrett
The Independent
6 hours ago
- General
- The Independent
Trump privately gripes that his own Supreme Court judge picks aren't standing behind his agenda: report
President Donald Trump has reportedly privately aired grievances about his most recent Supreme Court Justice pick, Amy Coney Barrett, for not sufficiently supporting his agenda. While the president publicly turns to the conservative-heavy court for help in implementing some of his most controversial agenda, in private, he's complained about some of the justices he's nominated, with an emphasis on Barrett, CNN reported. Barrett, the last justice to be nominated and appointed by Trump, has shown herself to be less of a hardline conservative than other justices such as Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito. In March, she joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the liberal wing of the court in ruling against Trump's attempts to avoid paying $2 billion in USAID funding. Last month, she recused herself from a case on religious charter schools, which left the court deadlocked in a decision. Those decisions came after Barrett joined Roberts and liberal justices in ordering Trump to be sentenced in his New York hush money case, just days before his inauguration. The recent maneuvers have earned the ire of Trump loyalists, with some calling her 'weak,' fueling the president's dissatisfaction with the highest court in the nation, according to CNN. Harrison Fields, a spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement that, 'President Trump will always stand with the U.S. Supreme Court, unlike the Democrat Party, which, if given the opportunity, would pack the court, ultimately undermining its integrity.' 'The President may disagree with the Court and some of its rulings, but he will always respect its foundational role,' Fields continued. Overall, the court, as well as Barrett, has largely handed Trump wins in cases over his administration's policies as well as his personal endeavors. Barrett joined her conservative colleagues last year in awarding Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution and allowing him on the ballot in several states. But, over the last year, Barrett has also shown herself unafraid of stepping away from the conservative bloc in various cases. Several sources familiar with the matter told CNN that Trump has aired complaints about Barrett as well as Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – the two other conservative judges he tapped for the court. Although Trump has shared his complaints privately, a source close to the president told CNN he does not want to launch public attacks on individual justices. After Barrett voted against Trump in the USAID case, the president defended her, calling her 'a very good woman.' 'She's a very good woman. She's very smart, and I don't know about people attacking her, I really don't know,' Trump told reporters.
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
When it comes to students' and teachers' rights, are charter schools public or private?
Future U.S. Supreme Court decisions could impact more than issues of religion and state, determining what basic rights students and teachers do or don't have at charter schools. (Photo: Hugh Jackson/Nevada Current) In April 2025, the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether the nation's first religious charter school could open in Oklahoma. The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would have been funded by taxpayer money but run by a local archdiocese and diocese. Several justices appeared open to the idea during questioning, leading some analysts to predict a win for the school. They were proved wrong on May 22, 2025, when the court blocked St. Isidore. The one-sentence, unsigned order did not indicate how individual justices had voted, nor why, simply declaring it was a split 4-4 decision that leaves in place the Oklahoma Supreme Court's ruling against the school. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case. Her former employer, the University of Notre Dame, runs a law clinic representing the school's supporters. Ever since the proposed school started making headlines, attention has focused on religion. Critics warned a decision in the school's favor could allow government dollars to directly fund faith-based charter schools nationwide. In part, the justices had to decide whether the First Amendment's prohibition on government establishing religion applies to charter schools. But the answer to that question is part of an even bigger issue: Are charters really public in the first place? The Supreme Court's order applies only to Oklahoma, so similar cases attempting to open religious charter schools may emerge down the road. As two professors who study education law, we believe future court decisions could impact more than issues of religion and state, determining what basic rights students and teachers do or don't have at charter schools. In June 2023, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved St. Isidore's application to open as an online K-12 school. The following year, however, the Oklahoma high court ruled that the proposal was unconstitutional. The justices concluded that charter schools are public under state law, and that the First Amendment's establishment clause forbids public schools from being religious. The court also found that a religious charter school would violate Oklahoma's constitution, which specifically forbids public money from benefiting religious organizations. On appeal, the charter school claimed that charter schools are private, and so the U.S. Constitution's establishment clause does not apply. Moreover, St. Isidore argued that if charter schools are private, the state's prohibition on religious charters violates the First Amendment's free exercise clause, which bars the government from limiting 'the free exercise' of religion. Previous Supreme Court cases have found that states cannot prevent private religious entities from participating in generally available government programs solely because they are religious. In other words, while St. Isidore's critics argued that opening a religious charter school would violate the First Amendment, its supporters claimed the exact opposite: that forbidding religious charter schools would violate the First Amendment. The question of whether an institution is public or private turns on a legal concept known as the 'state action doctrine.' This principle provides that the government must follow the Constitution, while private entities do not have to. For example, unlike students in public schools, students in private schools do not have the constitutional right to due process for suspensions and expulsions – procedures to ensure fairness before taking disciplinary action. Charter schools have some characteristics of both public and private institutions. Like traditional public schools, they are government-funded, free and open to all students. However, like private schools, they are free from many laws that apply to public schools, and they are independently run. Because of charters' hybrid nature, courts have had a hard time determining whether they should be considered public for legal purposes. Many charter schools are overseen by private corporations with privately appointed boards, and it is unclear whether these private entities are state actors. Two federal circuit courts have reached different conclusions. In Caviness v. Horizon Learning Center, a case from 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held that an Arizona charter school corporation was not a state actor for employment purposes. Therefore, the board did not have to provide a teacher due process before firing him. The court reasoned that the corporation was a private actor that contracted with the state to provide educational services. In contrast, the 4th Circuit ruled in 2022 that a North Carolina charter school board was a state actor under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In this case, Peltier v. Charter Day School, students challenged the dress code requirement that female students wear skirts because they were considered 'fragile vessels.' The court first reasoned that the board was a state actor because North Carolina had delegated its constitutional duty to provide education. The court observed that the charter school's dress code was an inappropriate sex-based classification, and that school officials engaged in harmful gender stereotyping, violating the equal protection clause. If the Supreme Court had sided with St. Isidore – as many analysts thought was likely – then all private charter corporations might have been considered nonstate actors for the purposes of religion. But the stakes are even greater than that. State action involves more than just religion. Indeed, teachers and students in private schools do not have the constitutional rights related to free speech, search and seizure, due process and equal protection. In other words, if charter schools are not considered 'state actors,' charter students and teachers may eventually shed constitutional rights 'at the schoolhouse gate.' When courts have held that charter schools are not public in state law, some legislatures have made changes to categorize them as public. For example, California passed a law to clarify that charter school students have the same due process rights as traditional public school students after a court ruled otherwise. Likewise, we believe states looking to clear up charter schools' ambiguous state actor status under the Constitution can amend their laws. As we explain in a recent legal article, a 1995 Supreme Court case involving Amtrak illustrates how this can be done. Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation arose when Amtrak rejected a billboard ad for being political. The advertiser sued, arguing that the corporation had violated his First Amendment right to free speech. Since private organizations are not required to protect free speech rights, the case hinged on whether Amtrak qualified as a government agency. The court ruled in the plaintiff's favor, reasoning that Amtrak was a government actor because it was created by special law, served important governmental objectives and its board members were appointed by the government. Courts have applied this ruling in other instances. For example, the 10th Circuit ruled in 2016 that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was a governmental agency and therefore was required to abide by the Fourth Amendment's protection from unreasonable search and seizure. Since the Supreme Court did not release any reasoning for its order, we do not know how the justices viewed the 'government actor' question in the case from Oklahoma. That said, we believe charter schools fail the test set out in the Amtrak decision. Charter schools do serve the governmental purpose of providing educational choice for students. However, charter school corporations are not created by special law. They also fall short because most have independent boards instead of members who are appointed and removed by government officials. However, we would argue that states can amend their laws to comply with Lebron's standard, ensuring that charter schools are public or state actors for constitutional purposes. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Amy Coney Barrett Decision Gives Libs Win in Shock SCOTUS Ruling
Oklahoma will not be able to use government money to fund a Catholic charter school, the Supreme Court ruled after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case. In Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, the Supreme Court rejected the proposal for St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to receive direct government funding in a 4-4 split ruling on Thursday. In instances where the justices are evenly split, the lower court ruling—in this case, the Oklahoma Supreme Court—stands. 'The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court,' the one-page ruling simply said. It did not note how each justice had voted. The lower court ruled that plans to open the nation's first-ever government-funded religious charter school were prohibited by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the government from establishing a religion or favoring one faith over another. While the split means the lower-court ruling stands, it does not set a precedent for other courts across the country to follow. It was not immediately clear why Justice Coney Barrett—whom President Donald Trump appointed in 2020—recused herself from the case, which meant she did not take part in oral arguments or the final ruling. The New York Times speculated that Coney Barrett's decision could have stemmed from her close relationship with Nicole Stelle Garnett, who was previously an adviser for the Oklahoma school. Coney Barrett and Garnett worked together at the Supreme Court in the 1990s before becoming colleagues at Notre Dame Law School. Coney Barrett has fallen out of the MAGA crowd in recent months after siding with her liberal counterparts in some high-profile cases. In one of those decisions in March, she sided with the court's liberal wing to block the White House's effort to freeze almost $2 billion in foreign aid. The decision Thursday prompted some MAGA supporters to label Coney Barrett a 'DEI pick,' referring to 'diversity, equity, and inclusion.' MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich wrote: 'She is evil, chosen solely because she checked identity politics boxes... Another DEI hire. It always ends badly.' The proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School was set to be run by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa. It would have been the first school to teach Catholicism to students while receiving taxpayer funds. The original proposal for the school was approved in June 2023; Oklahoma's Statewide Virtual Charter School Board voted to approve the school in a tight 3-2 ballot after a nearly three-hour meeting. But the state's attorney general, Gentner Drummond, sued over the decision in a bid to prevent the school from opening.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A Split Supreme Court Says Oklahoma Can't Have a Religious Charter School
On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that Oklahoma cannot allow the creation of a religious charter school. The deadlocked 4–4 ruling kept a lower court's previous decision in place without explaining the justices' rationale. The case stems from a plan to allow the creation of a public Catholic charter school called St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. While Oklahoma's charter school board initially approved the school in 2023, the state's attorney general asked the state Supreme Court to intervene. Both sides made arguments that appeal to religious freedom. The state argued that it would violate the Establishment Clause to allow a religious school to receive public funds and operate as a public school. St. Isidore, on the other hand, argued that a ban on religious charter schools would essentially be religious discrimination. Charter schools are allowed to abide by a wide range of educational philosophies; therefore only targeting religious pedagogy is unfair. Ultimately, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state. "What St. Isidore requests from this Court is beyond the fair treatment of a private religious institution in receiving a generally available benefit," reads the state Supreme Court's 2024 opinion. "It is about the State's creation and funding of a new religious institution violating the Establishment Clause." The case poses tough questions about under which circumstances the state can fund religious institutions—many states, for example, already allow parents to use public money to send their children to private religious schools through school choice programs. Unfortunately, the Court's decision didn't create much clarity. While the 4-4 decision leaves the state Supreme Court's ruling in place, it did not include an explanation from the justices, nor did it reveal how they voted. (Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, likely due to her affiliation with Notre Dame Law School, whose religious liberties legal clinic helped defend the charter school in the case.) This most recent deadlock at the Supreme Court shows just how murky debates over where religious discrimination ends and religious establishment begins can be. "This is a rock-and-a-hard-place situation for the Supreme Court," Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom, wrote for Reason last month. "Rule against St. Isidore, and discrimination against religion wins. Rule for it, and dangerous government entanglement will ensue." The post A Split Supreme Court Says Oklahoma Can't Have a Religious Charter School appeared first on
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Supreme Court blocks launch of nation's first public religious school
The Brief Oklahoma cannot proceed with opening the nation's first publicly funded religious school after a 4-4 Supreme Court vote. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, presumably because of her friendship with an adviser to the Oklahoma school. Chief Justice John Roberts likely sided with the court's liberals to block the school. A deadlocked Supreme Court blocked the creation of a publicly funded Catholic charter school in Oklahoma in a 4-4 vote. The ruling upholds an Oklahoma court decision to invalidate a vote by a state charter school board to approve the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would have been the nation's first religious charter school. But it leaves the issue unresolved nationally. The notice from the court is only one sentence with no opinion attached. Big picture view The 4-4 deadlock did not include a vote from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who recused herself. RELATED: Supreme Court rejects Trump's Alien Enemies Act deportations She didn't explain her absence, but she is good friends with and used to teach with Notre Dame law professor Nicole Garnett, who has been an adviser to the Oklahoma school. The issue could return to the high court in the future, with the prospect that all nine justices could participate. Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt and state School Superintendent Ryan Walters said the fight is far from over. "There will be another case just like this one and Justice Barrett will break the tie," Stitt said. RELATED: Supreme Court allows Trump to strip protected status for thousands of Venezuelans The court, following its custom, did not provide a breakdown of the votes. But during arguments last month, four conservative justices seemed likely to side with the school, while the three liberals seemed just as firmly on the other side. That left Chief Justice John Roberts appearing to hold the key vote, and suggests he went with the liberals to make the outcome 4-4. The backstory The Catholic Church in Oklahoma had wanted taxpayers to fund the online charter school "faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ." Opponents warned that allowing 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 case came 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. St. Isidore, a 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. What they're saying "Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer. While the Supreme Court's order is disappointing for educational freedom, the 4-4 decision does not set precedent, allowing the court to revisit this issue in the future," said Jim Campbell, who argued the case at the high court on behalf of Oklahoma's charter school board. The other side "The very idea of a religious public school is a constitutional oxymoron. The Supreme Court's ruling affirms that a religious school can't be a public school and a public school can't be religious," said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, also a Republican, sued to stop the school. He called the 4-4 vote "a resounding victory for religious liberty" that also will ensure that "Oklahoma taxpayers will not be forced to fund radical Islamic schools, while protecting the religious rights of families to choose any school they wish for their children." Dig deeper A key unresolved issue 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. North Dakota recently enacted legislation allowing for charter schools. RELATED: Judge blocks Trump's order to shut down the Education Department They are free and open to all, receive state funding, abide by antidiscrimination laws and submit to oversight of curriculum and testing. But they also are run by independent boards that are not part of local public school systems. The Source This report includes information from The Associated Press.
