The Daily Signal: Oklahoma Case Offers Supreme Court Chance to Benefit Families

This article was written by Andrea Dill and published in The Daily Signal.

A great many of the cases heard by our nation’s courts, at every level, require the delicate parsing of subtly contradictory facts and opinions leading to a decision that, almost inevitably, will greatly benefit some people while frustrating the lives and purposes of others.

Happily, Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond is not one of those cases.

Drummond essentially comes down to this: Oklahoma families should have as many good educational opportunities as possible. The state’s charter school board has determined that St. Isidore of Seville—a new Catholic charter school—meets all the necessary qualifications to be added to those learning options as an Oklahoma charter school.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, however, objects. Drummond will be arguing Wednesday before the Supreme Court that, as a religious school, St. Isidore should not receive charter school funding, primarily because granting it, to his mind, would violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Giving state funds to and contracting with a Catholic school, he contends, will make that school an instrument of the government and present Catholicism as the state religion.

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