By Trevor Pugh
On May 22, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in St. Isidore v. Oklahoma revealed a 4-4 deadlock. When the Court splits evenly, the lower court’s decision stands without setting a national precedent. In this case, the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling remains intact: a public charter school that receives taxpayer funding cannot require students, teachers, or staff to follow religious doctrine. While celebrated by advocates of the constitutional separation of church and state, enshrined in the First Amendment’s anti-establishment clause, the outcome may have hinged upon the recusal of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose absence prevented a majority that could either have overturned the lower court’s ruling or set a national binding precedent. Consequently, this is worth keeping an eye on in the future, and the question of how this result will affect state-funded school voucher programs remains pertinent.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court had concluded that funding St. Isidore—a charter school operated by the Catholic Church—would amount to using state funds to support a religious institution, which is prohibited under the Oklahoma Constitution. That court emphasized that although St. Isidore is technically a public charter school, it is fundamentally an instrument of the Church and would further its religious mission.
The Oklahoma court’s ruling also addressed interaction with state-funded scholarship (or voucher) programs. The Charter School Board and St. Isidore had argued that a previous Oklahoma Supreme Court decision, Oliver v. Hofmeister, supported their position. Oliver upheld a scholarship program that allowed parents of students with disabilities to use state-funded scholarships to send their children to private schools, including religious ones. However, the key distinction from St. Isidore was that the funds were given directly to parents, who then independently chose where to use them. The court reasoned this did not constitute direct state support of religious institutions.
In contrast, the court in St. Isidore concluded that the charter school’s structure and operations were too closely tied to a religious organization to qualify for public funding. By distinguishing the facts of the two cases, the Oklahoma Supreme Court reaffirmed that while voucher programs giving parents the freedom to choose schools are generally permissible, direct funding of religious charter schools is not.
While SCOTUS will likely address this issue in more depth in the future, the St. Isidore decision probably will not directly affect the growing trend of state voucher school programs. Absent further guidance, we are left with two realities: (1) SCOTUS’ decision was merely the result of a 4-4 split, which is a shaky foundation from which to predict future cases; and (2) states have routinely held that giving parents the choice (via a voucher) of the school in which to enroll their children in—whether religious or otherwise—is permissible and distinguishable from a state directly allocating funds to religious institutions.
About The Author:
Trevor Pugh is a summer clerk at Clark Partington and a Rising 2L at Samford University Cumberland School of Law.