A Tie Vote, A Bullet Dodged? Supreme Court Deadlock Halts Oklahoma’s Religious Charter School, But National Battle Looms

In a dramatic turn for one of the Supreme Court term’s most closely watched cases, an evenly divided court on Thursday effectively blocked Oklahoma’s controversial plan to establish the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school. The 4-4 deadlock, resulting from Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recusal, leaves in place an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that found the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would violate both state law and the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state. While this outcome brings a sigh of relief to public education advocates and defenders of the First Amendment, the lack of a majority opinion means no national precedent is set, and the fight over government funding for religious education is far from over. For many, this was a “bullet dodged,” but the weapon remains loaded.

The proposed St. Isidore school, a K-12 online institution backed by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, aimed to “evangelize its students in the Catholic faith,” integrating religious doctrine into every aspect of its curriculum. Had the Supreme Court ruled in its favor, it would have, for the first time, explicitly allowed direct and complete taxpayer funding to establish overtly religious charter schools, profoundly reshaping American education and further blurring the already contested line between church and state.

A Recusal and a Chief Justice: How the Line Was Held (For Now)

The 4-4 split was possible due to Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself, without offering a public explanation—a practice permissible under the Court’s new ethics code. Speculation, as reported by multiple outlets, centers on her close ties to Notre Dame Law School and individuals involved with St. Isidore, including Professor Nicole Garnett, a leading proponent of religious charter schools and an adviser to St. Isidore (Barrett is godmother to one of Garnett’s children, and the law school’s religious liberties clinic reportedly played a prominent role in representing the school).

With Barrett out, court watchers immediately focused on Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. During oral arguments in April, while the Court’s other participating conservative justices signaled sympathy for St. Isidore, Roberts posed probing questions to both sides. He notably pointed out to the school board’s lawyer that past Supreme Court religious liberty rulings involved more limited state benefits like playground improvements or tuition aid, stating of the Oklahoma plan, “This does strike me as a much more comprehensive involvement [by the state in religion].” Legal experts, including Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute and Erwin Chemerinsky of UC Berkeley Law, widely speculate that Roberts likely joined the Court’s three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—to create the deadlock, perhaps viewing this direct funding of a religious institution as a public school a step too far even for a court that has been increasingly solicitous of religious claims.

Oklahoma’s Contentious Crusade and a State Divided

The path to the Supreme Court was paved by a contentious battle within Oklahoma itself. Despite state law requiring charter schools to be nonsectarian, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board narrowly approved St. Isidore in 2023 by a 3-2 vote. This decision immediately drew legal challenges.

Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General, Gentner Drummond, took the somewhat unusual step of suing to block the school, arguing it violated both the state constitution’s ban on using public money for religious institutions and the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ultimately sided with Drummond in a 6-2 ruling, classifying St. Isidore as a “governmental entity” that would unlawfully use state funds for religious instruction. Drummond hailed Thursday’s SCOTUS outcome as “a resounding victory for religious liberty,” adding pointedly (and controversially, drawing a rebuke from Justice Alito during oral arguments for alleged hostility to Islam) that it ensures “Oklahoma taxpayers will not be forced to fund radical Islamic schools.”

However, other Oklahoma officials, like Republican Governor Kevin Stitt and State School Superintendent Ryan Walters (who recently mandated Bibles in public school classrooms), remain defiant, dismissing the tie as a “non-decision” and vowing the fight will continue, predicting Barrett will break the tie in a future case. This determination to push the boundaries, despite significant legal setbacks and the expenditure of taxpayer money on losing court battles, has drawn sharp criticism.

The National Stakes: Why This “Non-Decision” Reverberates

The relief among opponents of St. Isidore was palpable. Daniel Mach of the ACLU called the very idea of a religious public school a “constitutional oxymoron,” and argued that even for a Court that has shown “hostility to the separation between church and state in recent years, a case like this was a bridge too far.” Starlee Coleman, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, emphasized the ruling “sends an important message: Public charter schools are just that, public.” Many charter advocates feared that a ruling classifying religious charters as legitimate public schools could ironically undermine the entire charter movement by challenging their public status and funding mechanisms.

Yale Law professor Justin Driver, an education law expert, deemed the outcome “a really significant decision,” noting it was a departure from the Roberts Court’s consistent siding with free exercise claims. He, too, framed it as a “bullet dodged” for many in the education world.

An Unsettled Landscape: The Battle Lines Remain Drawn

Despite the victory for opponents in this specific instance, no one believes the issue is settled. Proponents of religious charter schools, like Nicole Garnett and Jim Campbell of Alliance Defending Freedom, were disappointed but undeterred, stressing the non-precedential nature of the 4-4 tie and their intent to bring the issue back. The broader legal landscape, as Reuters highlighted, includes several recent Supreme Court decisions (Trinity Lutheran, Montana tax credits, Maine tuition assistance) that have expanded religious rights and allowed more public funds to flow to religious entities.

This makes the Oklahoma tie particularly interesting. It suggests that while the Roberts Court is generally favorable to religious liberty claims, there may be limits, especially when it involves what the Chief Justice termed “comprehensive involvement” of the state in funding explicitly religious instruction as a public function. As long as Roberts remains Chief Justice, and if his vote was indeed pivotal here due to the specifics of this case, the Court might indeed be hesitant to take up an identical challenge from the same Oklahoma sources without a change in circumstances or Court composition. All eyes will undoubtedly be on Justice Barrett should a similar case reach the full Court.

For now, the “slippery slope” towards direct public funding of religious schools, which the Oklahoma Supreme Court warned could lead to “the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion without fear of governmental intervention,” has been temporarily blocked at the federal level. But the national debate over the role of religion in public education and the true meaning of the First Amendment’s religious clauses continues, with this “non-decision” serving as a crucial, if inconclusive, chapter.