The Supreme Court ruled Thursday against allowing Oklahoma’s first religious public charter school, in a case that has significant implications for religion in public life.
The court ruled 4-4 in Oklahoma State Charter School Board v. Drummond, after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself. The unsigned ruling offered no opinion on the merits, saying only that Justice Barrett took no part in the decision.
“The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court,” the ruling read in full.
The case, which education advocates worried would pave the way for further erosion of the separation between church and state, was brought by a right-wing legal fund, which petitioned the high court to take it up after the Oklahoma supreme court stopped a Catholic church from receiving taxpayer funds to establish a religiously affiliated school. Today’s decision will keep the lower court’s ruling barring the school funding in place.
However, it is not a permanent ruling — because the decision is a tie it simply affirms the lower court decision, the ruling is precedent only in the state of Oklahoma, meaning a case on this same topic could return to the Supreme Court at another time.
In 2023, the Oklahoma State Charter School Board approved an application for St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, a public charter Catholic school for kindergarten through 12th grade. But before the school could begin enrolling students, Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond asked the state Supreme Court to intervene. The court ruled 8-1 that the school could not be established as it would violate the constitutional separation of church and state.
“Under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school,” the court said in its opinion. “As such, a charter school must be nonsectarian.”
Charter schools are publicly available but privately run schools that are available for parents to choose from in nearly every state. Unlike public schools, charters have more discretion over staff and curriculum, and sometimes place more focus on certain educational goals such as language or performing arts. They also, unlike public schools, have leeway on rejecting students for space reasons. But they are still subject to federal and state oversight and are prohibited from charging tuition.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing legal organization that has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case. They argued that the state was violating the Catholic church’s religious freedom by not allowing it to participate in the state’s school charter program.
It has long been understood that under the separation of church and state included under the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, state-funded public schools cannot have a religious affiliation. In Engel v. Vitale, a 1962 landmark ruling, the Supreme Court said that prayer in public school was unconstitutional, paving the way for similar rulings about religion in the classroom.
Though the high court ruled against the plaintiffs, it has, in recent years, been friendly to claims of religious freedom from plaintiffs. During oral arguments in April, some of the conservative justices appeared to support the idea of publicly funded religious schools. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito both signaled that a religious public school would be legal because no one would be required to send their children there; it’s just another option.
“No one’s compelled to go,” Kavanaugh said. “You have a choice to go to the traditional public school, or you can go to a charter school of your choice that you can obtain admittance to, or you can go to a private school.”
The ruling is a setback for the conservatives who are trying to force Christianity into public schools. Oklahoma has been at the forefront of the movement: A state lawmaker in the GOP-controlled legislature has introduced a bill to require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments — following in the footsteps of Louisiana, Texas, and Missouri, which also have similar measures.
Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma state superintendent of schools, attempted to mandate that every single public school in the state use the Bible in the classroom. He’s currently being sued over the proposed requirement.