The St. Isidore case came up short, but religious education may be better off for it

While advocates of religious education may be frustrated with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent deadlock in St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, they may have dodged a bullet.

St. Isidore is a Catholic virtual school that applied to become a charter school in Oklahoma. The state denied the application because the school sought to engage in religious instruction. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution says that public entities cannot be religious. Charter schools historically have been seen as public schools. So, Oklahoma’s argument goes, they cannot be religious.