A Supreme Court Decision on Oklahoma Catholic Charter School Case Could Transform Public Education in Pennsylvania, and Across the Country

From the Bucks County Beacon

I’ve been writing about the push for a Catholic-run charter in Oklahoma since the idea first came up. The Bucks County Beacon gave me a chance to put all the mini-chapters of the story together. Now we wait to see if the Supreme Court is going to take up the case.

First, is the charter school a state actor? The petitioners want the answer to be no, because then they are not bound by the same state rules and regulations that any public school. 

After decades of charter schools, you would think this question would have been answered, but it has not. Charter schools continue to exist in a murky middle world where they are either public or private schools depending on what best suits their purposes. In states that also have school vouchers, the “public” label is particularly important, because it’s about the only marketing edge they have over the private voucher-accepting competition. But the “public” label comes with state regulation, which charter operators would prefer to avoid. 

The Supreme Court Justices had a chance to rule on this question just last year in Peltier, a case in which a charter school invoked its “not a state actor” status to justify a sexist, Title IX-violating dress code. But the court declined to hear the appeal. 

Second, the petitioners want to see the reasoning of the three cases cited to cover this situation, following Chief Justice John Roberts’ reasoning from Carson:

In particular, we have repeatedly held that a State violates the Free Exercise Clause when it excludes religious observers from otherwise available public benefits.

In his dissent on Carson, Justice Breyer speculated on where this reasoning may take us:

What happens once “may” becomes “must”? Does that transformation mean that a school district that pays for public schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to send their children to religious schools? Does it mean that school districts that give vouchers for use at charter schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to give their children a religious education? 

The petitioners are hoping that the answer is, in fact, yes, yes it does.

The board is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian legal advocacy firm that drafted the Mississippi anti-abortion law that led to the Dobbs decision. 

There’s so much more to the story, and I’ve tried to get the important parts into this piece. You can read whole article here (no paywall).