The state’s highest court said that the religious charter school would be a “state actor” and not a private entity contracting with the state. State funding of the school would violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition on government establishment of religion, the court said.

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether states may reject religious charter schools from receiving public funding, agreeing to hear arguments in an appeal out of Oklahoma involving the first such school in the nation.

The court will decide if a religious school operated by the Catholic church can open in Oklahoma as a charter receiving public money. The court is expected to hear the case in late April and to decide it by early summer, according to The Associated Press.

The proposal to create the nation’s first religious charter school paid for by taxpayer funds could move the line between church and state in education.

The Supreme Court has agreed to take on a new culture war dispute: whether the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school should be allowed to open in Oklahoma.

On January 24, 2025, the United States Supreme Court granted two petitions for certiorari in the cases of Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board

The Oklahoma case arrives at the Supreme Court on the heels of several other cases related to religion and education.

The Supreme Court took more religious rights cases in recent years than it heard in the previous two decades. Is it eroding the wall between church and state?

The Oklahoma Supreme Court agreed with the state of Oklahoma and blocked the opening of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, but recently, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The school’s argument is essentially that the establishment clause,

For years, the Supreme Court has been expanding the boundaries of government aid to religious schools. St. Isidore’s case pushes the debate into new territory.