Photo by Joann Martinez on Unsplash.
"The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday blocked a bid led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a major case involving religious rights in American education," Reuters (May 22, 2025) reports. While the teaching of evolution was not at issue in the case, concerns were expressed that, if found constitutional, such schools might refuse to teach evolution or insist on teaching creationism.
During oral arguments (PDF) in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond and St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond on April 30, 2025, the question of evolution education in religious schools arose several times. Justice Sotomayor quizzed the attorney for the charter school board about how the board would react "if a religious school wanted to change its curriculum to teach only [creationism] and not evolution?" — suggesting, in effect, that there was a slippery slope.
Later, Chief Justice Roberts asked about the limits of the state's control over the curriculum at religious charter schools. The Solicitor General, appearing in support of the charter school board and the school, offered that "there would be a strong argument that there's no free exercise opt-out" with regard to teaching evolution, thus blocking Sotomayor’s slippery slope. But he added that the state might have to argue that there is a compelling state interest in ensuring that students understand evolution.
The court deadlocked 4-4 (PDF) — Justice Barrett recused herself, perhaps because she is a friend of a professor who advised the school, as The New York Times (April 30, 2025) speculated — meaning that the Oklahoma Supreme Court's 2024 decision (PDF), finding that the school would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution as well as various Oklahoma statutes and the Oklahoma Constitution, stands.
