Stop Discrimination Against Religious Schools
By now, it’s become clear that President Trump intends to make school choice the law of the land. He has done all that he could to signal his support for school choice, signing executive orders and pushing the Congress to facilitate a state’s transition to a full school choice system.
“The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion.”
However, a new legal challenge has emerged that can potentially slow this momentum and significantly limit just how much choice families are allowed to enjoy when it comes to how they educate their children. According to a report at the CatholicVote, “The U.S. Supreme Court has set a date to hear oral arguments in a lawsuit that centers on the proposed opening of the country’s first Catholic online charter school.”
This case will determine if St. Isidore of Seville Catholic School, an online charter school in Oklahoma, is entitled to government funding. Although the governor, the state’s virtual school board, and likely most residents in the reddest state in the union were fine with allocating public funds to the school, the state’s attorney general Gentner Drummond challenged this on the grounds that it violated the principal of separating church and state. The courts up to this point have ruled in favor of Drummond, thus leaving it to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Oklahoma or any other state can use taxpayer dollars to fund religious schools.
As I argued in an essay discussing this case last year, this policy is a critical matter when it comes to school choice. If states are already allowing households to use educational savings accounts (ESAs) to pay for schooling options beyond public school, this would necessarily mean opening the door to enrolling their children in religious private schools.
If the Supreme Court rules against St. Isidore and maintains that it doesn’t qualify for state funding because it is a Christian school, this would represent a big step backward for school choice. Families would be forced to choose between the nearby public school, a (secular) charter school, and homeschooling — in other words, things go back to what it is in most states right now.
While secularists who despise school choice might relish such an outcome, religion ironically tends to creep back into schools in other ways. From what I have seen as an educator in Texas, many charter schools are basically Christian in everything but name: their staff, their leadership, their guiding mission, and often their student body are distinctly Christian and reject all things woke. And, depending on the neighborhood, even many public schools have effectively become the meeting grounds for students from nearby churches to meet and live out their faith, even when they pay lip-service to being completely secular in official school matters.
This is not exactly ideal. Somehow, we’re supposed to talk about being kind, empathetic, and responsible citizens charged with cultivating our talents for the good of society without ever referencing the Christian foundation for pursuing such a goal.
Plus, it keeps up the pretense that schools can somehow be neutral on the question of faith. Who does Drummond think he’s kidding when he argues that Oklahomans can keep religion out of their public schools by refusing to fund a Catholic online charter school? Moreover, who exactly is he helping with this?
Fortunately, the Supreme Court justices have every reason to rule in favor of St. Isidore and against Drummond. As the 2022 ruling on Carson v. Makin makes explicit, funding religious schools with government funds does not equate to establishing a state religion. In this case, Maine’s government was attempting to refuse public money to Christian schools, which happened to be the only schooling option for Mainers living in rural areas.
What Chief Justice John Roberts declared in the majority opinion should be decisive for any school choice program: “The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion.” Put another way, if any state is okay with having charters or funding ESAs, they also need to be okay with some of these schools being religious.
Hopefully, the justices stay consistent with this line of reasoning and allow St. Isidore, along with every other religious charter or private school, to receive state funding. No one should accept the fantasy that discriminating against religious institutions is somehow being neutral.
In the end, American parents just want choice, and they are voting and paying for the governments that are tasked with offering this choice. This means that they, not the government, ultimately decide whether their child attends a religious school or not. To argue or pretend otherwise only perpetuates a bigoted falsehood that holds back American children from getting the education they deserve.
READ MORE:
The Left’s Anti-Intellectual Problem
Americans Vouch for Religious Education Over Public Schools
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