OKLAHOMA CITY — The U.S. Supreme Court has decided on the date it will hear oral arguments over an Oklahoma Catholic school seeking taxpayer funding in what could be a test case for the separation of church and state.
Justices of the nation’s highest court will hear discussion and ask questions on April 30 in Washington, D.C., over St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. There’s no set date for the Court to make a decision on the case, but it typically does so by the end of June before its summer recess.
The case centers on whether St. Isidore should be able to open as a state-funded charter school in Oklahoma while teaching Catholic doctrine, requiring students to attend Mass and abiding by church principles.
Justices will consider two primary questions. The first is whether a privately run charter school truly represents an arm of the state when providing a free education while chiefly relying on taxpayer funds. Oklahoma law has long considered charter schools to be public like traditional school districts precisely because their primary source of funding comes from the state.
The second question before the Court is whether a state can exclude a charter school from receiving public education funding simply because the school is religious. Attorneys and advocates of St. Isidore have contended that doing so is religious discrimination.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court in a June 25 ruling decided the school would be unconstitutional and forbade it from accepting state funds.
A majority of the state Supreme Court agreed charter schools are public schools and that allowing an arm of the state to adopt a specific faith would lead to “the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion without governmental interference.”
The school’s founders, led by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, and the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, which initially approved the school in 2023, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Catholic leaders have sought to provide a free, religious education online to students in all parts of the state, particularly in areas that don’t have a Catholic school. Students of all backgrounds, including families of different faiths or no faith, would be welcome to attend the school, its leaders have said.
While arguing before the state Supreme Court, Attorney General Gentner Drummond said the school’s concept “eviscerates the separation of church and state.”
Drummond will attend the U.S. Supreme Court hearing in Washington, D.C., but it’s not yet decided who will present oral arguments against St. Isidore, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office said Monday.
The national Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom has helped lead the legal charge in favor of the school while representing the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board.
“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer,” the firm’s chief legal counsel Jim Campbell said in a Jan. 24 news release. “There’s great irony in state officials who claim to be in favor of religious liberty discriminating against St. Isidore because of its Catholic beliefs.”
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