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| The Supreme Court (JTA) |
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…
If I understand correctly, the United States thus became the first nation to not have an official religion. We are a secular nation that allows all citizens the freedom to pray in any manner we choose and guarantees that freedom in the Constitution.
There are two parts to this simple amendment: the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. The Establishment Clause has been interpreted to mean that there can be no government participation in any religious function. Doing so has been seen as a violation of that clause. This interpretation has come to be known as the separation of church and state.
However, a careful reading of the First Amendment shows that it says no such thing. Participation is not the same as establishing a religion. Nevertheless, this has been the way the amendment has been applied in numerous legal challenges. Many religious parents who wanted to pass their values on to their children through teachings available only in privately funded religious schools were deprived of the financial benefits given to secular parents in government-funded public schools. They argued that this was, in fact, a discriminatory practice by the government against religious people and an impediment to the Free Exercise Clause.
I have always argued that at least the core secular curriculum of parochial schools should be publicly funded, no different than public schools. Essentially, the government would be paying all teachers for teaching the same subjects, whether in public or parochial schools. I categorically reject the argument that religion would somehow creep into the secular classrooms of parochial schools. If the same teachers who teach those subjects in public schools also teach them in parochial schools, how is religion creeping in? Many religious schools already use non-Jewish teachers to teach those subjects, even in Charedi schools—at least those that haven’t abandoned a secular studies curriculum.
But what has happened recently seems to be a reconsideration of the notion of complete church-state separation, apparently interpreting it as I do: that participation does not mean establishing religion.
According to JTA:
After Oklahoma approved a request by the Catholic Church to open a charter school in 2023, lawsuits quickly followed. Courts at both the state and federal levels ruled against the church, finding that a publicly funded school promoting religion would be unconstitutional.
Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up the case, signaling that the justices are willing to consider overturning a longstanding legal precedent protecting the separation of church and state. If the court allows St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to become the first government-funded religious school in the country, the consequences for religious education—including for Jewish schools—could be far-reaching.
You betcha! I would love to see this radical change in government funding for education. It would mean a far more equitable distribution of funds per family. Instead of limiting financial support to parents who send their children to public schools, all parents would get a slice of the pie. There is no reason a religious parent should be denied those funds simply because they want to ensure the transmission of their religious values to their children. No single religion would benefit alone—all religions would.
Imagine what it would be like for Orthodox Jewish parents if their children’s education were paid for by the government, just like everyone else’s.
As radical as this change might seem based on the history of the Court’s decisions on church-state issues, the Supreme Court of today has a supermajority of conservative justices who have paid much more attention to the rights of religious people than the liberal justices of the past, who dominated the Court for decades and often treated religious values as if they were immoral.
Are there concerns? Sure. For example, I’m not so crazy about the possibility of including schools that teach radical Islam.
There is also the problem of requiring schools to accept anyone who wishes to enroll their child—regardless of their religion.
But I think a responsible way can be worked out to decide which schools would be eligible and which wouldn’t, and who could attend and who couldn’t.
I don’t know how the Supreme Court will rule here, but if they find in favor of allowing religious schools to be charter schools, that would be a major game changer.
