Politics

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday in a Catholic virtual charter school’s bid to become the nation’s first religious charter school. The Oklahoma charter school board that approved the Catholic school’s application tells the justices that a state supreme court ruling invalidating its contract with the school violates the Constitution and harms lower-income families. But the state’s attorney general counters that a ruling in favor of the Catholic school could upend the charter-school system nationwide.

The Oklahoma law governing charter schools requires them to be non-religious “in their programs, admissions policies, and other operations.” The dispute now before the court began when the archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the diocese of Tulsa applied to the state’s charter school board to establish a virtual Catholic charter school, St. Isidore of Seville. The purpose of the school – which was named after the patron saint of the internet and projected to have an initial enrollment of 500 students, approximately half of whom would come from lower-income families – is explicitly religious: It “fully embraces” the Catholic Church’s teachings, “fully incorporates” them “into every aspect of the” school, and intends to participate “in the evangelizing mission of the church.”