{"id":16443,"date":"2025-05-05T15:26:25","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T15:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=16443"},"modified":"2025-05-05T15:57:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T15:57:19","slug":"scotus-decision-on-religious-charter-schools-will-carry-widespread-ramifications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=16443","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS Decision on Religious Charter Schools Will Carry Widespread Ramifications"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/scotus-decision-on-religious-charter-schools-will-carry-widespread-ramifications-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/p>\n

In a case that could have major implications for the American public school system, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether religious charter schools, which are taxpayer-funded, are constitutional.<\/p>\n

The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond case involves a 2023 decision by the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board to allow St. Isidore to join the dozens of charter schools in the state.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond sued the charter school board, arguing that allowing St. Isidore to join the public charter school program amounts to state-sponsoring of religion.<\/p>\n

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled in Drummond\u2019s favor, but St. Isidore is arguing before the Supreme Court that contracting with the state to provide free and public education options as a privately run entity does not mean its religious activities constitute \u201cstate actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lori Windham from Becket law firm, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief<\/a> in support of St. Isidore, told The Center Square that a major question in the case is whether charter schools are closer to traditional public schools or instead function as private schools that are eligible for public funds like scholarships.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are already a lot of programs that taxpayers fund for things like federal student loans or federal scholarships that go to religious schools and non-religious schools alike,\u201d Windham said. \u201cFunds to help disabled students, funds to help schools have better security measures to prevent school shootings and hate crime \u2013 those go to religious schools and non-religious schools alike.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo in that way, this charter school isn’t so different from lots of other programs that are out there where many different people can come in and ask to be part of that program, regardless of whether they’re religious or not,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Though identifying as a Catholic school, St. Isidore accepts nonreligious students and does not require a statement of faith. Accordingly, the school also argues that an exclusion of St. Isidore from the state\u2019s charter school program, simply because it is religious, violates the First Amendment\u2019s free exercise clause.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a generally available program, you can’t kick out religious people or religious groups just for being religious. You have to allow them to compete on the same basis as everybody else,\u201d Windham told The Center Square. \u201cAnd that’s the main argument that the charter school is making here, that they’re just trying to compete for that charter on the same basis as any other private group who wants to start running a school as part of that program.\u201d<\/p>\n

If precedent is any indication, St. Isidore has a high chance of winning the case. In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the state of Maine\u2019s ban on state tuition assistance to students attending religious schools.<\/p>\n

But if SCOTUS does rule in Drummond\u2019s favor, other areas where religious students and schools are currently receiving state funds \u2013 such as assistance for students with disabilities \u2013 could be jeopardized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/scotus-decision-on-religious-charter-schools-will-carry-widespread-ramifications-2\/ In a case that could have major implications for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":3845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16443"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16445,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16443\/revisions\/16445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}