The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday on the fate of the first religious religious charter of the nation in Oklahoma, which seeks to use the government’s money to teach a curriculum injected by universal doctrine.
In previous cases from Maine and Montana, the court has decided that states that decide to create programs to help parents pay for private schools should allow them to choose religious. The main question in the new case is whether the licenses of first modification – or even require – states to grant and fund religious charter schools, which are public schools with substantial autonomy.
The School of Oklahoma, St. Isidore of the Catholic Virtual School of Seville, is to operate from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Cathedral of Tiles and aims to integrate universal teachings into every aspect of its activities.
A decision in favor of the school could affect the laws in other 45 states that allow charter schools. It will also blur a line founded in previous cases of the Supreme Court, which distinguish the government’s money provided to parents to spend on private schools, including religious and government support provided directly to religious schools.
The controversy is the third major case concerning religion that must be supported before judges within about a month. In March, the court seemed ready to rule that a Catholic charity in Wisconsin had the right to tax exemption that a state court had denied on the grounds that charity’s activities were not mainly religious. Last week, the court marked that it was likely to rule that parents with religious objections could withdraw their children from lessons in which LGBTQ topics are discussed.
After the Oklahoma School School Council approved the proposal to open St. Isidore, State Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, sued to stop it. Mr Drummond said a religious public school would violate the ban on state creation of the religion of the first amendment and the prohibition of the state’s constitution from spending public money to support religious institutions.
He said the school crossed a line drawn by Justice leader William H. Rehnquist in a 2002 Supreme Court ruling that distinguishes “between government programs that provide aid directly to religious schools”, as opposed to “true privately -owned programs, people ”.
The lawyers for St. Isidore faced a court that testifies that “hopes to offer another training selection For Oklahoma, and no student will be forced to attend Saint Isidore. “They added that” the school will receive students and state funding only through private families. “
The school said it would welcome students to “different religions or without faith”. It was less categorical to teachers, saying that all of the charter of Oklahoma are free to adopt their own staff policies.
The Supreme Court of State has ruled against the school, with the majority saying that it would “create a slippery slope” that could lead to “the destruction of Oklahoma’s freedom to exercise religion without fear of government intervention”.
“St. Isidore is a public charter school,” the majority said, noting that the state law that allows these schools requires non -incompatible. “According to state and federal law,” the majority decided, “The state is not authorized to create or fund St. Isidore”.
In the most recent ruling by the US Supreme Court on government support of religious schools, Carson vou Makin in 2022, the majority decided that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a state -run curriculum.
But justice leader John G. Roberts Jr., who writes for the majority, said that “Maine can provide a strict secular education to its public schools”.
In disagreement, Judge Stephen G. Breyer, who left that year, said that even the Maine’s program, confined to private schools, was problematic.
“Members of the religions of minorities, with very few supporters to establish schools, can see injustice to the fact that only those who belong to more popular religions can use state money for religious education,” writes Justice Breyer. “Taxpayers may be upset by funding the spread of religious beliefs they do not share and disagree with.”
Justice Amysey Barrett took over herself from the Oklahoma case, the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board V. Drummond, no. 24-394, but he has not said why. He was a professor of law at Notre Dame, whose religious clinic of freedom represents the School of Championship and is close friends with Nicole Garnett, a professor who helped St. Isidore.
