Recusal from case with huge implications for education could tilt scales in cause her friend spent a career defending.

Linda Jacobson | The Guardian | Opinion / CC.

On 30 April, the court will consider a legal question that has defined her career: can explicitly religious organizations operate charter schools? At the center of the dispute is St Isidore of Seville Catholic virtual school, an online school in Oklahoma that planned to serve about 200 students this year before the state supreme court ruled the decision to approve it violated the constitutional provision separating church and state.

“This could be an earthquake for American public education,” said Samuel Abrams, who directs the International Partnership for the Study of Educational Privatization at University of Colorado, Boulder. As the country experiences a rise in Christian nationalism, a favorable ruling could invite the encroachment of religion not only into education but other areas of civic life that have traditionally been non-sectarian. “If the supreme court rules in favor of overturning that decision, the church-state cleavage will disappear. That’s a dramatic development for the first amendment.”

… If other recent school choice cases are any indication, there’s still a good chance the court will overturn the Oklahoma supreme court’s opinion. Such a precedent-setting development would have a seismic impact on the nation’s educational landscape, said Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B Fordham Institute.

The court could say that “a charter school authorizer can’t turn down an otherwise qualified applicant just because it is religious, or proposes a religious school”, he said.

Such a ruling, he said, could affect all 46 states with charter school laws. But ripple effects could stretch beyond the classroom….

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Mon 17 Mar 2025 04.30 EDT

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