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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Thursday, in a rare deadlocked 4-4 ruling, said Oklahoma cannot create the nation’s first religious charter school funded directly with taxpayer dollars.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not take part in the decision, recusing from the case early on, presumably given her ties to the Notre Dame law clinic that supported the Catholic diocese, but she did not explain her decision.
The Supreme Court issued a one-line opinion upholding the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling that taxpayer-funded religious schools would violate both the state and U.S. constitutions.
“The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court,” the Supreme Court wrote in an unsigned ruling so it is not known how each justice voted on the issue.
The court action leaves in place lower court rulings that said the arrangement would have violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
The decision is a setback for a religious freedom movement that has notched major gains in recent years under the Supreme Court’s current conservative majority, including rulings allowing the use of taxpayer-funded school vouchers, scholarships, and capital improvement grants by religious organizations.
The ruling is almost certainly not the final word on the issue, however.
Because the Supreme Court divided evenly, its decision is not a binding precedent nationwide and sets the stage for the entire court to reconsider the issue in a future case, perhaps from another state.
The decision is being greeted with relief by advocates for public schools and independent charter schools, who feared that a ruling in favor of St. Isidore of Seville, the Oklahoma Catholic school, would create major disruptions to education systems nationwide.
Forty-five states have charter school programs, encompassing 8,000 schools that serve 3.8 million kids.
Some states, opposed to funding of religious charter schools, had warned they may be forced to curtail their charter programs or end them entirely.
ABC News’ Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.
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