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‘In a bind’: Right-wing Supreme Court justices squirm as case puts them in awkward spot
The Supreme Court is set to hear an Oklahoma case that will force the justices to choose between allowing more religious control of public schools or "respecting the wishes of the Founding Fathers," according to a new article in The Atlantic.
History professor Adam Laats laid out how, "In 2023, the Oklahoma government approved an application from the Catholic Church to create a virtual charter school. Like other charter schools, this one would be funded by taxpayers. But unlike other charter schools, this one would be explicitly religious, teaching students Catholic doctrine."
Laats wrote that Oklahoma’s state attorney general objected on the grounds that the approval violated the state constitution, as well as the U.S. Constitution.
He explained that the Founding Fathers foresaw "he death of public schooling if schools came under the authority of any specific religious denomination, or even if a school appeared to favor one denomination over another."
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"Oklahoma’s plan for a public school run by the Catholic Church would...fly in the face of the Founding Fathers’ intentions and go against two centuries of American tradition," Laats wrote. "And it puts the six members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in a bind. In previous decisions, they have insisted that they will be guided by history, using that rationale to allow for more religion in public schools. In this case, however, if they want to follow their own rules, they must decide in the other direction."
Laats wrote that members of the religious right are "hopeful" about the case that the Supreme Court will hear next week, since SCOTUS has given them "some significant victories in recent years" that were guided by the justices' understanding of history.
"But the case from Oklahoma makes claiming history as a justification harder for the conservative justices," he wrote. "In this case, the history is unambiguous: The Founding Fathers would never have approved of a public school that taught the religious doctrines of one specific kind of Christianity."
