U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear Catholic charter school case

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case involving two Catholic dioceses seeking to establish the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school.

Last October, the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in Oklahoma and its board requested the Supreme Court review the case after the state’s highest court denied the school’s opening. In its filing, the court agreed to revive the case, setting a schedule that could lead to a decision potentially by early summer.

With one hour granted for oral arguments in the writ of certiorari, petitioners’ briefs are ordered to be filed before March 5 with respondent’s briefs ordered to be filed on or before March 31.

In June 2023, Oklahoma’s virtual charter school board voted to approve the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school. A year later, however, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court ruled the move unconstitutional.

As a result, Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond blocked its funding, calling the decision “an irreparable violation of our individual religious liberty” and “an unthinkable waste of our tax dollars.”

The state’s highest court also found the charter violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

“Because it is a governmental entity and a state actor, St. Isidore cannot ignore the mandates of the Establishment Clause, yet a central component of St. Isidore’s educational philosophy is to establish and operate the school as a Catholic school,” the court wrote in its decision.

In its October 2024 petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, St. Isidore and the charter school board asked the justices to review whether Oklahoma had violated the Free Exercise Clause by excluding religious schools from the state’s charter school program.

“This case presents the ideal vehicle to resolve that exceptionally important question,” according to the petition. “Nearly every state has freed privately operated charter schools from government interference to foster operational independence, parental choice, and educational innovation.”

“As a result, charter schools have flourished. But shackling them with the limitations and obligations of governmental bodies ‘denies their very reason for being’ and promises to thwart the ‘diverse educational options’ they have provided to families across the country,” the petition read.

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