Supreme Court decision blocking a religious charter school is positive

By Cameron Vickrey

News broke today about the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling about religious charter schools. The court was split in a 4-4 vote which upholds the lower court’s previous ruling that a charter school cannot be religious.

Supporters of the separation of church and state, including Fellowship Southwest, should be relieved by this ruling. Charter schools are free public schools who are funded by taxpayer dollars and ought to abide by the nonsectarian rules that all public schools are subject to.

In these trying and difficult times, it’s necessary to go to the courts to protect our rights and freedoms. We’re grateful that our friend and partner at Good Faith Media, Mitch Randall, was a plaintiff in this case.

The case was around a Catholic school that Oklahoma lawmakers voted to fund with taxpayer dollars, essentially making it the nation’s first religious charter school. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional, and SCOTUS upheld that ruling with their divided vote.

For public education advocates, this is a victory. We don’t believe that more choices in education improve educational outcomes or create more opportunity. Instead, it weakens the schools we already have by funneling limited resources to more and more schools.

Recent Supreme Court rulings have more often weakened the establishment clause of the First Amendment and the separation of church and state. Though today’s ruling was made without a statement, I believe what clenched this decision could have been the ambiguity of what a charter school is and should be. Charter schools claim to be public when it suits their cause—they receive state funding and offer free tuition. But they distance themselves from the limitations of public schools and operate much more like private schools for almost everything else.

A state-sponsored inherently religious school crosses the line into definitely not public school territory.