The Supreme Court Is About to Let Religion Ruin Public Education

[Nevilledog]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/supreme-court-oklahoma-catholic-charter-school/


In modern America, religious education is offered in private schools or in a homeschooling setting. Public education, by contrast, is secular, because the government is not in the business of sponsoring religious indoctrination. But in two cases the Supreme Court heard over roughly the last week, the justices appear ready to throw out public education as we know it and usher in a new era where tax dollars flow to religious schools and religion can dictate what is taught in public classrooms. When the decisions come down, public education may change forever.

“This is taxpayer-funded, state-sponsored religious indoctrination. You’ve just got to call it what it is.”
On Tuesday, the justices heard arguments in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, a case over whether Oklahoma must fund a religious charter school that carries out religious instruction and hosts religious activities, including mass. Rather than consider this an affront to the separation of church and state, four Republican-appointed justices appeared outraged at the idea that a state would fund a charter school focused on language immersion or the arts but not one focused on religious instruction. Without ever acknowledging that the the First Amendment’s establishment clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) prohibits government-sponsored religion, several expressed palpable anger that allowing only secular charter schools was a form of anti-religious discrimination.

“All the religious school is saying is ‘Don’t exclude us on account of our religion,’” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said. “If you go and apply to be a charter school and you’re an environmental studies school, or you’re a science-based school, or you’re a Chinese immersion school, or you’re a English grammar-focused school, you can get in. And then you come in and you say, ‘Oh, we’re a religious school.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, no, can’t do that, that’s too much.’ That’s scary.” He continued: “You can’t treat religious people and religious institutions and religious speech as second-class in the United States… And when you have a program that’s open to all comers except religion… that seems like rank discrimination against religion.”

The case comes out of Oklahoma, where state law mandates public charter schools be secular. Nevertheless, the Catholic archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the diocese of Tulsa sought to create the country’s first religious charter school. Called St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, it would be an online school that would infuse Catholic teaching in its curriculum and require students to attend religious programming. The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual School Board granted the charter, but Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court to order the board to reverse course. “This is not [about] free exercise of religion,” Drummond has said. “This is taxpayer-funded, state-sponsored religious indoctrination. That’s what this is. You’ve just got to call it what it is.”

*snip*

[House of Roberts]

1. What is surprising about this?

Religion has ruined them.

[surfered]

2. You are free to send your child to a private school.

But you cannot expect reimbursement from public money. I want my kids to go to a park without those “other” kids, so can I be reimbursed with public money to join a country club?

[bluestarone]

3. Well, Hell ya great idea. working so good over there in the

Middle east. Stupid Fuckers.

[SharonClark]

4. Red states are already offering vouchers

that parents used to put their children in parochial schools. It’s a disgrace the taxpayer money is funding private and religious schools to the detriment of the public schools.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. Not just for charter schools. If SCOTUS lets this one pass, then

why can't parochial schools get municipal, state, and federal tax funding? Or yeshivas? Or any religious school?

[MurrayDelph]

7. I'd be willing to bet

they'd find a way to exclude madrasas.

[kimbutgar]

6. Gee what could go wrong ?

Uncredentialed teachers who have no formal teaching education
Potential child molesters
No learning is happening because teachers can’t control the students
Racial division in classes white vs Non white students
And lowered reading scores because teachers put a computer in front of them and expect to educate themselves
No math between addition and is traction.

One can easily see how they would destroy our educational system and we have parents who are not as involved and don’t think much of helping their kids with homework. ( I see it myself with some kids in classes I sub) I ask questions about when they do homework and only about 30% have parents who are involved.

He needs to be stopped. Or we’ll become an even more idiotic idiocracy!

[RJ-MacReady]

8. Satanic Temple

You know what to do.