Catholic Church Slurp at the Public Trough Called Religious Liberty and Education Freedom by Republican Governor

[Boydstun]

 

Taxpayer-Funded Religious Charter School

[Doug Morris]

Morally, the only right answer is separation of state and education.

Constitutionally, the courts have to work it out.

 

[Boydstun]

Quote

Something deeply un-American is underway in the state of Oklahoma.

In June, Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved the nation’s first religious public charter school. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa were given permission to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in August 2024.

That’s right, a religious public school, funded by the state’s taxpayers. Proponents hope this model will spread to the dozens of other states that allow charter schools. Seven percent of public school students in the country attended charter schools as of the fall of 2021, and that number continues to grow. That’s why Christian nationalist groups see charter schools as fertile ground for their full-on assault on the separation of church and state in public education.

In just the past year, significant progress has been made in infusing Christianity into public schools. Texas, for example, now allows public schools to replace certified school counselors with religious chaplains and came close to requiring every classroom to display the Ten Commandments. New laws  in Idaho and Kentucky could allow teachers and other public school employees to pray in front of — and even with — students. Missouri and Louisiana authorized public schools to teach Bible classes. West Virginia nearly passed a bill that would allow public schools to teach intelligent design creationism. Accompanying these laws are increasingly successful efforts to ban books and lessons about race, sexual orientation, gender identity and even menstruation in public schools.

The establishment of a school that claims to be simultaneously public and religious — what has been a legal oxymoron in the United States since its founding — violates one of the foundational principles of American constitutional tradition: the separation of church and state. . . .

 

By Rachel Laser

Ms. Laser is the president and chief executive of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

NYT – 1 August 2023

Edited August 1 by Boydstun

[StrictlyLogical]

On 6/8/2023 at 4:31 PM, Doug Morris said:

Morally, the only right answer is separation of state and education.

Hear hear.

 

[Boydstun]

Do we have any Constitutional basis for barring States from setting up their public education systems (funded with State taxes and local property taxes and presently 7% federal funds)? 

With or without that barrier, we do have Constitutional bases for separation of Church and State in America. The Oklahoma Secretary of State (who, like the Governor, is a Republican) has maintained throughout that the Catholic charter school plan is unconstitutional by its violation of the separation of Church and State. New Development

[DavidOdden]

2 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Do we have any Constitutional basis for barring States from setting up their public education systems (funded with State taxes and local property taxes and presently 7% federal funds)?

Unlike defense, interstate commerce, coining money, patents and copyrights, post office etc, “providing education” is not an enumerated power of the federal government. The feds do get a say in how their money is spent, but that power cannot be wielded coercively given the 10th Amendment. It is settled law that 5% of a state’s budget is not coercive (S. Dak v. Dole) and 10% is (NFIB v. Sibelius). However, the only constitutional reach that the feds have is to make receipt of federal funds be contingent on doing something, thus if a state wants to lower the drinking age to 16 at the expense of 5% of its budget, it can, and that would not be (was not) deemed to be coercive.

A flat prohibition is essentially impossible, especially when every state is constitutionally compelled to provide education. To get away with a federal law against state-organized education, a mighty powerful commerce-clause would have to be set forth. They would have to establish that outlawing state-level education is imperative to a compelling federal interest in regulating interstate trade.

[Grames]

"In just the past year, significant progress has been made in infusing Christianity into public schools."

In "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" Rand teaches how everyone needs it and everyone actually has one whether they can articulate it or not.  The previous generation of court decisions and laws that drove even the acknowledgement of the existence of Christianity from the public schools came at a cost: it made way for "alternative" value systems not technically recognized as religious to be taught instead.  The current resurgence of Marxism, socialism, environmentalism and every other absurdity up to and including transgenderism is the direct consequence of driving Christianity out of the schools without mandating an appropriate replacement.  People don't know how to rebel against those consequences and thus protect their children except to bring back the old time religion.    But it is just a rebellion and rejection, a negating of a negative.  

Outlawing government education is a good idea.  Good luck with that.