The Supreme Court appeared open on Wednesday to allow Oklahoma to use government money to direct the first religious autonomous school of the nation, which would teach a curriculum infused by Catholic doctrine.
Excluding the School of the State Autonomous School System would be equivalent to “classifying discrimination against religion,” Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh said the duration of the oral argument.
The main question in the case is whether the first amendment allows, or even requires, the states sponsoring and financing religious autonomous schools, which are public schools with substantial autonomy.
The Oklahoma School, St. Isidor of the Virtual Catholic School of Seville, must be operated by the Archdiocese or Oklahoma City and the Diocese or Tulsa, and aims to incorporate Catholic teachings in all aspivities.
After the Charter de Oklahoma Board approved the proposal to open St. Isidore, the State Attorney General, Gentner Drummond, thirst to stop it. Drummond, a Republican, said that a religious public school would violate the prohibition of the first amendment of the government establishment of religion and state constitutions prohibit spending public money to support religious institutions.
The judges seemed to be divided along the usual ideological lines, with the appointed Republicans of the Court that greatly sympathize with the school and their very cautious democratics. But Judge Amy Coney Barrett lay down from the case, raising the possibility of a draw vote, a single Republican joined the three democratics. That would leave a decision of the State Court rejecting the intact school.
The president of the Supreme Court, John G. Roberts Jr., who asked questions that support both parties, seemed to be the most likely member of such a potential alliance.
In previous cases of Maine and Montana, the Court ruled that they establish that they decide to create programs to help parents pay private schools should allow them to choose religious. Those decisions, said the president of the Roberts court, “involved a rather discreet state participation”, while Oklahoma’s supervision of the new school “seems to me a much more comprehensive participation.”
Later on the argument, he thought, he suggested that another of the court decisions required to allow school.
A decision in favor of the school could affect the laws in another 46 states authorizing the autonomous schools, said Gregory G. Garre, lawyer of Mr. Drummond. Also, he added, blur a line established in previous cases of the Supreme Court that distinguish between government money provided to parents to spend in private schools, including religious, and the government directly provided.
The dispute is the third important case that deals with the religion that will be argued before the judges in the space of approximately one month. In March, the court seemed to be ready to rule that a Catholic charity in Wisconsin, with the right to tax exemption that had denied the leg by a state court on the grounds that the activities of the beneficial organization were not mainly religious. Last week, the court pointed out that it was more likely that parents with religious objections can withdraw their children from classes in which stories books with LGBTQ songs are discussed.
Much of Wednesday’s argument focused on Wheter St. Isidore had created the created leg and would be controlled by the State, which makes it a public school.
St. Isidore’s lawyers and the state agency who had approved it said the school was created in private and would be operated independently.
But Judge Elena Kagan said that St. Isidore and Charter schools such as this have many characteristics of “regular public schools.”
“Accept everyone,” he said. “They are free. They can be closed by the State. There is a great curricular participation by the State, approach by the State. They have to comply with all state standards.”
Judge Neil M. Gorsuch suggested that St. Isidore was independent enough or Oklahoma, but said that other states could exercise more control, for example, demanding that public officials serve in Charter schools. ‘
“Have you thought about that Boomerang effect for Charter schools?” Hey asked James A. Campbell, lawyer of the Oklahoma agency who approved St. Isidore.
Mr. Campbell said that the states “can establish their School Programs Charter as they seem better,” but added that “they are important commercial, because part of what makes Charter schools great is the autonomy they are given.”
Judge Gorsuch returned to the point later on the argument. “A participation here can be applied in some states and cannot be applied in others,” he said.
Mr. John Sauer, in his first argument as Attorney General of the United States, argued in favor of St. Isidor in the name of the Trump administration.
“Participation in Charter schools is mediated by two layers of private choice, both applicants created by schools and parents who choose to send their children,” he said. “Oklahoma does not control its programs, personal or curriculum.”
Mr. Garre said that a decision in favor of St. Isidore “would result in the Asta rule to establish not only Can but has to Financing and creating public religious schools, a reversal of the precedents of this court. “
Judge Kavanaugh toke the opposite opinion. “Everything that the religious school says is’ they do not exclude us due to our religion,” he said, he added: “Religious people and religious institutions and religious discourse cannot be treated as a second class in the United States.”
Judge Barrett was cut off the case, the Board of the Charter State School of Oklahoma v. Drummond, No. 24-394, but he didn’t say why. She is a former law professor at Notre Dame, whose clinic of religious freedom repeats the Autonomous School, and is a close friend of Nicole Garnett, a teacher who has helped St. Isidore.
The school said it would welcome students or “different religions or no faith.” It was less categorical about teachers, and said that all Oklahoma Charter schools are free to adopt their own personnel policies.
The Supreme Court of the State ruled against the school, with the majority saying that “it would create a slippery slope” that could lead to the freedom of “the destruction of the oklahomanos” to practice without fear of government intervention. “
“St. Isidore is an Autonomous Public School,” said the majority, and pointed out that state law that allows such schools to require that they are not nocturnal. “According to state and federal law,” the majority ruled, “the State is not authorized to establish or finance St. Isidore.”
In the most recent decision of the United States Supreme Court on government support for religious schools, Carson v. Makin in 2022, most ruled that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a state registration program.
But the president of the Supreme Court Roberts, writing for the majority, said that “Maine can provide strictly secular education in his public schools.”
In dissent, Judge Stephen G. Breyer, who retired that year, said that even Maine’s program, limited to private schools, was problematic.
“Members of minority religions, with very few adherents to establish schools, can see injustice in the fact that only those belonging to more popular religions can use state money education,” writes Judge Breyer. “Taxpayers may be upset about having to finance the spread of religious beliefs that do not share and with which they disagree.”
Judge Kagan echoed that point on Wednesday, saying that the position of the State favored conventional religions at the expense of “religions that seem peculiar to many eyes, but feel deeply.”
