Questions: Society & Politics

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.