One of the year’s most closely watched religious liberty cases came to a sudden and anticlimactic end last week when the Supreme Court deadlocked over the question of whether the First Amendment’s free exercise clause requires states to permit religious charter schools. In an equally divide per curiam decision (with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing), the Court affirmed without opinion a decision of the Oklahoma Supreme Court that blocked the Oklahoma Charter School Board’s approval of what would have been the nation’s first religious charter school — St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School.
The deadlock was unfortunate. The decision deprives St. Isidore — a joint effort of the two Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma that sought to use charter-school funding to deliver virtual Catholic education throughout the large, mostly rural state — of its day in court. The decision also deprives school children in Oklahoma of a high-quality, innovative educational option.
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