I miss Ted King (especially as the separation of church and state erodes further)

[Lemon Drop]

Miss you Ted!

SCOTUS may be about to to allow Oklahoma to have a publicly funded religious charter school. The school uses a curriculum based on Catholic teachings and would have a good deal of autonomy over what is taught, compared with traditional public school.

The argument is First Amendment rights of schools, which makes no sense to me. If the state funds religious instruction, how is that not the state "establishing an official religion?"

So will they fund Muslim, Orthodox Jewish, atheist, and pastafarian schools too? Wiccan?

https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/supre...er-school/

[Acer]

If I am not Catholic, but send my kid to attend this school that is using my tax dollars, because the local public school is full of drugs, violence and liberalism; can my child be excused from religion classes or religious services held during school hours?

[abevilac]

I went to Catholic school and religion was the first class of the day and if some kids didn’t know the answers to the questions, the nuns would say we’re not going on to math until everyone gets this right. And sometimes we didn’t do math. K through 8 school.

[Acer]

abevilac wrote:
I went to Catholic school and religion was the first class of the day and if some kids didn’t know the answers to the questions, the nuns would say we’re not going on to math until everyone gets this right. And sometimes we didn’t do math. K through 8 school.

But it wasn't paid for with Freedom Dollars.

[Lemon Drop]

Acer wrote:
If I am not Catholic, but send my kid to attend this school that is using my tax dollars, because the local public school is full of drugs, violence and liberalism; can my child be excused from religion classes or religious services held during school hours?

I seriously doubt it.

Ironically, many public schools now have "release time religious instruction," where a local church picks up kids during the day, with parents permission, and takes them to the church for Sunday school, except it's Wednesday.

This is big in South Carolina but only Baptist or Evangelical churches do it, of course.

Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn do this, as do Mormans in Utah. But I only recently learned Protestants are in on it too. One of my aunts leads this at her Southern Baptist church. They call it lunchtime prayer group.

Many problems with this. No oversight of what is being said to the kids, no vetting of the church volunteers as is normal with other school volunteers, no apparent problem with the fact that this church has some values that are quite different than those of the public school district, such as discrimination against gay people.

[Lemon Drop]

Couple of updates: this charter school in question is a virtual school. No in-person classes. Which means it would be easy for this to spread quickly to other states if SCOTUS gives public funding the nod.

Also, Justice Barrett has recused herself from this case. She didn't say why, but it is most likely due to her close friendship with one of the charter school's leading advocates.

[Bill in NC]

Can't wait for the Wahabbist charter school paid for by taxpayer dollars!