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The U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 in a dispute over the blocking of a religious charter school in Oklahoma after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, possibly because of her connection to an adviser on the case.
Barrett didn’t explain her recusal. but the Associated Press reported that she is good friends with Notre Dame law professor Nicole Garnett, who was an early adviser to the Catholic Church in Oklahoma that was trying to establish the charter school. Barrett was a law professor at Notre Dame from 2002 to 2017.
The outcome keeps in place an Oklahoma court decision that invalidated a vote by a state charter school board to approve the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would have been the nation’s first religious charter school. But it leaves the issue unresolved nationally.
Several students from Notre Dame Law School’s Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic have worked on the case since before the original lawsuit was filed.
“It has been our privilege to represent St. Isidore and to fight for the freedom for people of all faiths to serve the public good. Today’s evenly divided decision unfortunately fails to vindicate that fundamental right,” said John Meiser, counsel to St. Isidore and Director of Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic. “We are disappointed most of all for the hundreds of children for whom this school would have opened a new world of opportunities.”
According to AP, the issue could eventually return to the high court, with the prospect that all nine justices could participate.
The case, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, asked the nation’s high court to consider whether a faith-based school should be allowed to operate as a virtual charter school in the state of Oklahoma.
The Catholic Church in Oklahoma had wanted taxpayers to fund the online charter school “faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ.” Opponents warned that allowing it would blur the separation between church and state, sap money from public schools and possibly upend the rules governing charter schools in almost every state.
In June 2023, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board voted 3-2 to approve the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School’s application to join more than 30 privately operated charter schools in the state.
The school was set to open for the 2024-2025 school year, but, in October 2023, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, sued the school board for approving the application, arguing it violated both the state and U.S. constitutions.
Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments for the case on April 30.
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