The Supreme Court prevents Oklahoma to throw the religious autonomous school financed by taxpayers
The Supreme Court on Thursday, in a rare failure of 4-4 dead, said that Oklahoma cannot create the first religious autonomous school in the country funded directly with taxpayers dollars.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic, did not participate in the decision, challenging himself from the case from the beginning, presumably gave him the ties with the clinic of the Faculty of Law of Notre Dame who supported the effort of the Catholic Archdiocese to create the school, but did not explain its decision.
The Supreme Court issued an opinion of a line that defends the decision of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma that religious schools financed by taxpayers would violate both state constitutions and the United States.
“The sentence is affirmed by an equally divided court,” the Supreme Court wrote in an unpleasant ruling, so it is not known how each justice voted on the subject.
The Court’s action leaves the decisions of the lower courts that said the agreement would have violated the establishment clause of the first amendment.
The United States Supreme Court is seen on April 7, 2025 in Washington.
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The decision is a setback for a movement of religious freedom that has achieved important profits in recent years under the current conservative majority of the Supreme Court, including decisions that allow the use of school coupons, scholarships and subsidies for the capital improvement of taxpayers financed by taxpayers.
However, the failure is almost surely not the last word on the subject.
The Judge of the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, attends President Donald Trump’s speech at a joint session of the Congress in the Chamber of the Capitol Chamber of the United States, March 4, 2025.
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Because the Supreme Court was uniformly divided, its decision is not a binding precedent throughout the country and prepares the scenario so that the entire court will reconsider the problem in a future case, perhaps from another state.
The decision is being received with relief by the defenders of public schools and independent autonomous schools, who feared that a ruling in favor of St. Isidore of Seville, the Catholic School of Oklahoma, would create large interruptions in educational systems throughout the country.
Forty -five states have Charter school programs, covering 8,000 schools that serve 3.8 million children.
Some states, in opposition to the financing of religious autonomous schools, had warned that they could be forced to reduce their charter programs or finish them completely.
Alexandra Hutzler of ABC News contributed to this report.
