On June 25, 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled the public status and funding of the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to be in violation of state law and the U.S. Constitution. In its ruling the court concludes:
St. Isidore is an instrument of the Catholic church, operated by the Catholic church, and will further the evangelizing mission of the Catholic church in its educational programs. The expenditure of state funds for St. Isidore’s operations constitutes the use of state funds for the benefit and support of the Catholic church…Here, there is no question that the State will provide monetary support to teach a Catholic curriculum, and students at St. Isidore will be required to participate in the religious curriculum, both of which (the OK Supreme Court previously) disallowed.
The court explains, as I have argued in numerous articles on this and other blogs, that the Catholic virtual school is explicitly intended to be publicly-funded religious indoctrination:
St. Isidore will fully incorporate Catholic teachings into every aspect of the school, including its curriculum and co-curricular activities. It will require students to spend time in religious instruction and activities, as well as permit state spending in direct support of the religious curriculum and activities within St. Isidore–all in violation of the Establishment Clause…(which) prohibits public schools from requiring or expecting students to participate in religious activities.
The state’s previous Attorney General, the activist conservative Catholic John O’Connor, argued—based on what the OK Supreme Court’s ruling dubs “the Free Exercise Trilogy” of U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Trinity Lutheran vs. Comer (2017), Makin, Espinoza vs. Montana (2020) and Carson vs. Makin (2022)—that the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment requires the government to give religious entities full and equal access to any “generally available public benefit” like school funding. The OK Supreme Court emphatically rejects this argument, saying,
The differences between the Free Exercise Trilogy cases and this case are at the core of what this case entails–what St. Isidore requests from this Court is beyond the fair treatment of a private religious institution in receiving a generally available benefit, implicating the Free Exercise Clause. It is about the State’s creation and funding of a new religious institution violating the Establishment Clause. Even if St. Isidore could assert free exercise rights, those rights would not override the legal prohibition under the Establishment Clause.
As a result, the St. Isidore school has announced it will not open in Fall 2024, and has currently stopped accepting applications for admission. The Catholic Conference of Oklahoma wailed, “Oklahoma Supreme Court kills nation’s first Catholic charter school during Religious Freedom Week.”
Next (Potential) Stop: The U.S. Supreme Court
It should be noted that Justice Dana Kuehn—appointed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court by the school choice-promoting governor Kevin Stitt—dissents from the majority opinion, arguing in line with O’Connor and Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative,
By allowing St. Isidore to operate a virtual charter school, the state would not be establishing, aiding, or favoring any particular religious organization. To the contrary: Excluding private entities from contracting for functions, based solely on religious affiliation, would violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Agreeing with this, the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma puts their position succinctly, “A wrongheaded ruling is an invitation for review by the U.S. Supreme Court.” The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City has confirmed they will indeed appeal the ruling.
Notably, some legal experts believe the U.S. Supreme court may refuse to hear the case until similar cases have arisen in other states. Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, says, “At least until we see more charter school cases like this one, I think the Supreme Court will leave this alone.” Willamette University law professor Steven Green agrees, “If you have only one state, they tend to let it lie.” University of South Carolina law professor Derek W. Black therefore concludes, “I don’t think it’s an attractive case (to the U.S. Supreme Court).”
At the same time, State Superintendent of Public Instruction (and Catholic Conference of Oklahoma executive director Brett Farley’s chaos agent) Ryan Walters predicts St. Isidore will prevail at the U.S. Supreme Court because former-President Trump stacked the bench:
Look, we will continue to battle. We feel very confident in President Trump’s nominees to the U.S. that, if we can—if we get sued and we get challenged, we will be victorious, because the Supreme Court justices he appointed actually are originalists that look at the Constitution and not what some left-wing professor said about the Constitution.
So we feel very confident in it moving forward and winning every legal case.
With all this discussion of courts and legal precedents, it is interesting to note the Oklahoma Supreme Court concluded its ruling with the order, “By writ of mandamus, we direct the Charter School Board to rescind its contract with St. Isidore.” While St. Isidore asked the Supreme Court to stay its ruling, the newly formed Statewide Charter School Board is largely ignoring the court order. Even though newly-appointed chairperson Brian Shellem says the Board intends to comply with the order—after he personally torpedoed the previous Board’s attempt to comply—the Board nonetheless refused to take action on the contract.
Teaching the Bible in Classrooms
Late last year Walters attempted to intervene in the state Supreme Court case, but the Court denied his motion and thereby relegated him to the sideline. How has the attention-seeking Walters responded to losing what he intended to be a career-boosting achievement?
He made his move back into the spotlight on June 27th by announcing that Oklahoma public schools—later clarified to be grades 5–12—are required to keep a Bible in every classroom and incorporate it into the curriculum. The Bible,
…along with the Ten Commandments…will be referenced as an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like, as well as for their substantial influence on our nation’s founders and the foundational principles of our Constitution.
Walters expresses deep concern that a conservative Christian perspective on American history is not being taught in public schools. In an interview with PBS he proclaims,
So we have standards that are in place that talk about that (sic) our teachers are to teach the role religion played in the classroom. We have since seen that they are not doing that. They are not talking about in their classroom the role that the Bible played in American history.
According to Walters, this situation will end with the coming school year. Notice both the pervasiveness of the Bible in his intended curricula, as well as the fate of teachers who do not promote to his satisfaction the Christian Nationalist perspective on society and governance:
We are going to show the countless citations…(Students are) are going to see quotations. They’re going to see directly from individuals who said the Bible impacted their decision-making. That is in our standards. If teachers don’t want to teach it, they are compelled to teach it, or they can find another job (emphases added).
He underscores the seriousness of the situation in an interview with NBC,
Any teacher that would knowingly, willfully disobey the law and disobey our standards—there are repercussions for that. So we deal with that on a case-by-case basis, but yes, teachers have to teach Oklahoma Academic Standards and this is absolutely going to be part of them.
Pay attention to the point, “willfully disobey the law”—to refuse to promote Christian Nationalism in the classroom is now an illegal act in Oklahoma…mandated by the member of a board that is blowing off a direct order from the state Supreme Court.
“Additionally,” Walters continues in his initial announcement, “the State Department of Education may supply teaching materials for the Bible, as permissible, to ensure uniformity in delivery.” What are these materials? From where do they come, and what exactly do they teach (and, equally importantly, with whom do they disagree and how do they do so)? We have no idea beyond Walters’ vague statement in the PBS interview, “We have issued this guidance, and we are issuing additional guidance to classroom on specificity in the upcoming weeks” (yes, this is how he talks when he is attempting to sound intelligent and competent).
Going Forward
For the time being Oklahomans are not required to fully fund a Catholic school that is exempt from state oversight, but we are required to support teaching Christian Nationalism in public school classrooms. The Oklahoma Catholic bishops and Ryan Walters may have suffered a (perhaps only temporary) defeat, but they nonetheless have a profitable new angle: Walters is getting the media coverage he craves, and the Catholic Church benefits by having the press distracted from paying attention to the ways in which the bishops’ hand-picked state Secretary of Education might use state resources to direct funds to Catholic schools.
One battle has been won, but the struggle for rigorous and inclusive education in Oklahoma continues.
Image: Supreme Court chamber in the Oklahoma state capitol (Source).
