As the Supreme Court takes on the case of a religious charter school, Jan Resseger looks at the wall between church and state. Reposted with permission.
So far, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, isn’t having much success in his quest to break down the wall that separates church and state. Right now his two primary attempts are on hold, thanks to decisions by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which has upheld the principle that government cannot violate a person’s liberty by mandating that a particular religion be promoted in public schools.
On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union announced: “In a victory for religious freedom, public education and church-state separation, the Oklahoma Supreme Court today temporarily blocked Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters and the Oklahoma State Department of Education… from spending taxpayer dollars on Bibles and Bible-infused instructional materials. The order came in the lawsuit Rev. Lori Walke v. Ryan Walters, which was filed in October 2024 on behalf of 32 Oklahoma families, teachers and faith leaders. The plaintiffs are represented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law & Justice.”
Peter Greene explains: “In June, 2024, Walters issued a letter requiring Oklahoma public schools ‘to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support’ in grades 5 through 12. There was pushback almost immediately from superintendents who announced that there would be no such change in their curriculum, along with civil liberties groups citing the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion. Walters has previously written that the separation of church and state is a ‘radical myth.’ ”
Last October when the case was filed, the ACLU quoted some of the plaintiffs describing their opposition to Walters’ plan to insert Biblical study into Oklahoma’s public school curriculum. The named plaintiff, Rev. Lori Walke, the minister at Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, declared: “I am a faith leader who cares deeply about our country’s promise of religious freedom and ensuring that everyone is able to choose their own spiritual path. The state mandating that one particular religious text be taught in our schools violates the religious freedom of parents and children, teachers, and taxpayers.”
The Rev. Mitch Randall, a Baptist pastor and also a plaintiff, explained: “I’m appalled by the use of the Bible—a sacred text—for Superintendent Walters’ political grandstanding. As a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, I’m alarmed by the parallels between this Bible mandate and the religious proselytization and forced assimilation my relatives faced in government boarding schools.”
Ms. Erika Wright, a third plaintiff, and a parent and leader of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition, said: “As parents, my husband and I have sole responsibility to decide how and when our children learn about the Bible and religious teachings. We are devout Christians, but different Christian denominations have different theological beliefs and practices. It is not the role of any politician or public school official to intervene in these personal matters.”
The issue of whether the Bible should be incorporated into a state’s public school curriculum is not the only Oklahoma legal case about the First Amendment and public schooling to which we should all be paying attention. The appeal of an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision to block the opening of a religious charter school awaits oral arguments by the U.S. Supreme Court next month. The NY Times’ U.S. Supreme Court columnist, Linda Greenhouse published a column last Sunday calling readers to pay attention:
“(A) case set for argument next month before the court merits more attention than the little it has received, given its destabilizing potential for public education. The central question is whether a state that allows charter schools as alternatives to traditional public schools, as nearly all states do, must agree to fund those that are explicitly religious… The court is not being asked to decide whether a state may, if it chooses, include a taxpayer-funded parochial school among its charter school offerings… The case goes farther. It concerns what would be the first fully taxpayer-supported religious school in modern American history. The internet-based ‘virtual’ Catholic school that the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa seek to operate, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, would promote the ‘evangelizing mission of the Church.’ The question is whether the Constitution requires Oklahoma to permit the school to open its virtual doors as a public charter school.”
The case before the U.S. Supreme Court is an appeal brought by the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board to overturn a decision by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in a case brought by the state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, who sued to block the opening of the Catholic charter school for violation of the Oklahoma Constitution and the Establishment Clause of the U. S. Constitution’s First Amendment. The Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked the school from opening.
This case is the latest in a series of cases brought by opponents of religious liberty to test the Establishment Clause. Greenhouse explains: “This is far from the first collision between the two religion clauses of the First Amendment, the protection for the ‘free exercise’ of religion and the prohibition against religion’s official ‘establishment.’ But this case reaches the court at a time of rapid change in the justices’ treatment of the relationship between the two clauses. Not so long ago the Supreme Court was willing and able to manage the inherent tension between the two clauses by giving weight to each.” But… “In a series of cases beginning in the early 2000s… the court has substituted for what would have been Establishment Clause concerns a seemingly limitless nondiscrimination principle: Whatever the government does for anyone, it has to do for religion, too. Further, the court’s invocation of the Free Exercise Clause in these cases has depended on the notion that when parents choose a generally available financial subsidy like a voucher or tax credit for religious use, that is a private choice in which the government plays no role.”
The big question is whether a charter school, fully funded by the state, is a public or a private school. Greenhouse explains why the case about St. Isidore charter school is enormously consequential: “The case puts the Supreme Court to a choice. If St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School is a public school, the court can uphold it only by further erasure of the Establishment Clause. If the justices deem it sufficiently private to evade the Constitution’s reach, they will have invited further fragmentation of public education, one of the few experiences that most Americans share. At this fraught moment for the court and the country, it may not be too much to suggest that the future of an increasingly fragile civil society is at stake as well.”