Good news! The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled against public funding for a religious charter school. Many were watching closely to see how the court ruled. A decision that went the other way would have rebuffed the tradition of separation of church and state and erased the distinction between charters and vouchers. The fact that Oklahoma’s ultra-conservative Governor Kevin Stitt and its State Commissioner of Education Ryan Walters strongly supported the religious charter school idea makes the decision even more startling.
CNN reports:
An effort to establish the first publicly funded religious charter school in the country has been blocked by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
The court Tuesday ordered the state to rescind its contract with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in a 6-2 decision with one recusal.
“Under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school,” wrote Justice James R. Winchester for the court. “As such, a charter school must be nonsectarian. However, St. Isidore will evangelize the Catholic faith as part of its school curriculum while sponsored by the State.”
A charter contract for St. Isidore was approved by a state board last year.
Charter schools in Oklahoma are privately owned but receive state funding under the same guidelines as government-operated public schools.
The fight over the school exposed a fault line between two of the state’s top Republican politicians. Gov. Kevin Stitt strongly advocated for the school, saying when the contract was approved that it was “a win for religious liberty and education freedom in our state.”
But the school’s charter status was strongly opposed by Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who filed the lawsuit against it and predicted the state could be forced to fund other types of religious education if St. Isidore succeeded.
“The framers of the US Constitution and those who drafted Oklahoma’s Constitution clearly understood how best to protect religious freedom: by preventing the State from sponsoring any religion at all,” Drummond said in a statement Tuesday. “Now Oklahomans can be assured that our tax dollars will not fund the teachings of Sharia Law or even Satanism.”
PLEASE OPEN THE LINK TO FINISH THE STORY.
[Thanks to reader FLERP for alerting us to this story.]
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This legal case was a clear and deserved win for the First Amendment’s prohibition on establishment of religion. Even sweeter is the fact that a conservative majority of justices rendered the decision.
Now let’s defend the First Amendment right of free speech, a right not held in high regard by the Biden administration.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2024/06/25/biden-trump-debate-free-speech/74170141007/
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That article is by Jonathan Turley, whom I do not consider reliable or unbiased. I have not seen evidence that Biden or his administration is against free speech. If you mean that they tried to suppress lies about vaccines or other kinds of dangerous lies, I’d say there are indeed limits to free speech. What about hate speech? What about telling the public to inject bleach to cure COVID? Our democracy has a serious problem with disinformation and widely circulated lies.
Trump is such an inveterate liar that facts and truth have become meaningless in his orbit.
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It’s shocking that anyone educated would think that freedom of speech is absolute. There are many things one cannot say. Threats of violence. Speech meant to defraud. Treasonous speech, such as revealing our nation’s secrets. Hate speech. False medical disinformation or misinformation that causes harm. One could go on and on. I looked in vain in this article for an example of an egregious suppression of speech by the Biden administration.
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All that said, Turley has an incredibly impressive resume. I think I’ll order a copy of his book.
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Turley churns out idiotic legal takes nonstop.
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That’s probably a bit unfair, I don’t know his work well. I just know that when I was following the New York and Georgia proceedings against Trump, Turley kept showing up in my Twitter feed and being extremely wrong.
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No apologies needed, FLERP. Your gut reaction was right.
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Expand your sources of information outside your left-wing bubble and you’ll know what Turley refers to. Other liberals agree with him.
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Turley is not a liberal. There is no evidence that Biden is hostile to free speech. Trump leads a cult that opposes free speech and censors books.
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Mike, I am not in a left-wing bubble. You are in a Trump bubble. He is your cult leader.
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I assure you that my forces of information are more extensive than yours. Get out of your rightwing bubble. Think for yourself.
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You know nothing about me. I support the Oklahoma court’s decision in the religious charter school case. I’m a Trump cultist?
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Mike, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today 6-3 in favor of the Biden administration.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with the Biden administration in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the federal government can go to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices threw out lower-court rulings that favored Louisiana, Missouri and other parties in their claims that officials in the Democratic administration leaned on the social media platforms to unconstitutionally squelch conservative points of view.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court that the states and other parties did not have the legal right, or standing, to sue. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.
The decision should not affect typical social media users or their posts.
The case is among several before the court this term that affect social media companies in the context of free speech. In February, the court heard arguments over Republican-passed laws in Florida and Texas that prohibit large social media companies from taking down posts because of the views they express. In March, the court laid out standards for when public officials can block their social media followers.
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“E questo dubbio e impossibile a solvere a chi non fosse in simile grado fedele d’Amore.” –Dante, La vita nuova
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Turkey is a long way from making a case for the historical evil of Adams or Biden. His analogy between McCarthy and company screaming “communism” and democrats suggesting that certain judges deny that Jan 6 was an attempted coup is even weaker. McCarthy was not successful in the prosecution of communists, primarily because he investigated people like Oppenheimer, whose experience with that philosophy was in a distant past. Several participants in the attempted coup have been successfully prosecuted recently.
Turley might better spend his editorial opinions on something besides trying to normalize trump, who is not normal.
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Thank you, Roy. Common sense and careful research, as usual.
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Mike and Diane: Their next trick will be to try to find a legal way to give preference to ONE faith tradition over the others, in this case, Catholic. Totalitarianism, however, is the bad seed that lives in the hearts of all religious traditions, which is moderated by many and by the basic foundations of democracy; but if not thought through, turns easily into a forceful reach for political power. As unmoderated that seed is also where religious wars get their existential kill or be killed steam.
What strange and distorted thinking, however: that keeping tax supported public schools free of religious ideology in a democracy, where “the people” are, by our Constitution, free to live by whatever religious tradition one wants . . . is to “condone unconstitutional discrimination against religious educators and the children they serve.” These people obviously cannot think beyond their own noses.
I do think all public schools should educate children well about the history of religions as a part of public school curricula, and about different doctrines, and even being clear about the difference between teaching from a specific doctrine (indoctrination) and teaching ABOUT freedom of religion and so receiving an education that informs for freedom of choice but does not direct. Teaching about religions and their history is way distinct from incorporating religious training and putting one doctrine over others.
The import of this difference (between religious training and religious education) becomes manifest in how students regard other people from religious traditions other than their own. Apparently that distinction has been lost in many areas of discourse in the United States.
On a personal note, as a Catholic, I am embarrassed by such backward thinking as was evident in this Oklahoma case. CBK
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“On a personal note, as a Catholic”
My condolences! 😉
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Hi Duane: The problem with information dispersion in our world is that most of the time, everyone hears and sees ONLY what is the most extreme, ridiculous, dangerous, asinine, and/or stupid about what’s going on with any person or group. And then we slip into the fallacy of thinking that’s all there is. (Like the song.)
Moving right along, . . . CBK
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(Like the song.)
Hmm, can I have one clue as to what the song is? Thanks!
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Duane: You want me to hum a few bars?
But it goes: If that’s all there is, then let’s keep dancing. CBK
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“. . . Let’s break out the booze and have a ball If that’s all there is!
Thanks, I don’t remember that song but I found it and listened to it.
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Duane: A theme song for today, perhaps? CBK
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Good news and not a close decision, which means s even better.
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““St. Isidore is considering its legal options but today’s decision to condone unconstitutional discrimination against religious educators and the children they serve is one that the school will continue to fight,” said John Meiser of the University of Notre Dame’s Religious Liberty Clinic, who assisted St. Isidore with its charter application to the state.”
Uh, yeah. Thanks, John Meiser of Notre Dame, but you’re not exactly one to talk about discrimination against different religions, sua santitá.
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