Search Results: all we do is argue

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to consider a high-profile case that could open the door to allowing public dollars to directly fund religious schools.

The widely watched case out of Oklahoma could transform the line between church and state in education, and it will come before a court whose conservative majority has broadly embraced the role of religion in public life.

The case centers on a proposal for the nation’s first religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The school would be online, and its curriculum would embed religious teachings throughout lessons, including in math and reading classes.

As a charter school, it would be run independently from traditional public schools. But public taxpayer dollars would pay for the school, and it would be free for students. The question of whether the government can fully finance a religious school has proved especially divisive within the school choice movement and across Oklahoma.

They urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, believing the conservative-leaning court would decide in the school’s favor.

A coalition of religious leaders, advocates of public schools and some other state Republicans say the proposal is unconstitutional. Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, argued it would “open the floodgates and force taxpayers to fund all manner of religious indoctrination, including radical Islam or even the Church of Satan.”

The OK SCOTUS wrote in a majority opinion that the school would “create a slippery slope” that could lead to “the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion. Still, as more Republican state legislatures move to support school vouchers and other options for parents to use public money to educate their children in private schools, including religious schools.

The case will present new education questions for the 6-to-3 conservative majority, which has shown an openness to religion in the public sphere.

Friend sent me this from NY Long Island paper:

While NYS DMV says the Mobile IDs are safe, some critics argue the digital driver's license poses personal privacy and security concerns.

Digital IDs are not yet widely accepted as proof of identity. More than 25 states have adopted or are moving toward adopting the virtual IDs.

The digital IDs can be accessed by cellphones to quickly identify the holder while traveling, at bars, stores that sell liquor and tobacco products, doctor's offices & more - as long as the business decides to accept them. More than 20 airports accept the ID including NYs Kennedy & LaGuardia.

Since then, social media has lit up with concerns that the virtual IDs will serve an authoritarian government at the cost of personal privacy, including calling digital IDs "deep state psyops."

The conservative Rebel News website is pushing a petition claiming digital IDs "call for invasive collection of biometric markers, location data, banking information and vaccination records... digitization will surely have dire consequences for our lives as governments assert more power over us."

But the concern is broader. The NY Civil Liberties Union alerted the DMV about "urgent concerns" five months before the state announced the program. The group called for investigation, public debate and a full balancing of benefits and costs of the program before it was made public. "Without public debate or discernible legal and technical.

The company contracted to provide Mobile ID is Idemia Identity and Security USA, part of a French-based global company. Idemia has several contracts with the state for facial recognition, fingerprinting and other security programs.

The NYCLU's concern isn't just what Mobile ID can do now, but what in can do in the near future, said Daniel Schwarz, senior privacy and technology strategist. "The technology needs to be open sourced, revealing its full capabilities, and that state legislation is needed to provide safeguards."