SCOTUS Will Hear Religious Charter School Case

The case involves the Oklahoma Attorney General seeking to stop the state’s charter school board from allowing an online Catholic school to become a charter school where it can then receive publicly available education funds.

Liberty Counsel filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of Covenant Journey Academy (CJA) noting that SCOTUS has long recognized that parents bear the primary responsibility for directing their children’s education – a fundamental right that must necessarily include the ability to choose a school that accords with their values and meets their children’s needs.

Put simply, once a state provides a benefit for private education, it cannot exclude faith-based schools without violating the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause, concluded Liberty Counsel.

In 1999, the Oklahoma legislature created the Statewide Charter School Board to authorize and oversee the state’s charter schools. Under this structure, a private institution may enter into a contract with a public sponsor program, receive funds, and operate as a charter school in the state. These schools are open to all students and may not charge tuition or fees. In 2023, two Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma City and Tulsa applied to create a new religious charter school called St. Isidore of Seville out of their virtual online schools. With its vested authority, Oklahoma’s Statewide Charter School Board approved the new charter school. 

However, the state’s attorney general sued claiming the board violated a state law that does not allow a “nonpublic sectarian school or religious institution” to become a charter school. According to a press release, the board members granted the Catholic school’s application as a way of upholding their oath to the U.S. Constitution, in which SCOTUS has repeatedly held that religious groups cannot be excluded from publicly available programs solely because they are religious.

However, in June 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court bypassed these precedents by considering private charter schools as “state actors” and “governmental entities,” thus holding the state can then exclude religious organizations from its charter school program.

Liberty Counsel noted that school choice is more important than ever in light of how government schools are employing curriculums “irreconcilable” with American and Judeo-Christian values, and are “failing” to meet children’s needs. Despite America’s public education investment of nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars annually, a recent Gallup poll suggests that trust in public education has hit a 24-year low. Parents once trusted schools to teach math, science, history, and literature without political interference. But parents have become increasingly frustrated by stagnating or falling academic standards, politicized instructional materials, including gender identity theory to radical critiques of American history, and being labeled as “domestic terrorists” for protesting such things at school board meetings.

“Parents are left with no real choice but to exit the system entirely,” wrote Liberty Counsel. “Since 2020, public school enrollment has declined by over 1.2 million students, with a corresponding increase in private school and homeschooling enrollment.”

Liberty Counsel stated that losing access to a charter school option like St. Isidore of Seville would strip Oklahoma parents of their right to direct the religious and educational upbringing of their children.

CJA is an online, nationwide K-12 Christian school which holds that faith-based virtual schools have a right to be included in publicly available programs. The Supreme Court’s decision will have a significant impact on not just the ability of all faith-based virtual schools to participate in school choice programs, but may reduce the school choice options for parents seeking to align their children’s education with their religious values.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The Constitution does not permit the government to dictate which schools are ‘too religious’ for school choice programs. Faith-based, virtual schools offer parents an alternative when government-run schools fail to provide a safe or ideologically neutral environment for the families they claim to serve. The Supreme Court has made clear that when a state attempts to impose an educational model that contradicts the deeply held beliefs of parents, it trespasses on the Constitution. School choice strengthens education, and the High Court has the chance once again to affirm that parents have the right to direct the education of their children.