Minnesota must protect itself from funding parochial schools
In the last story, I wrote about the Legislature nibbling at charter school reform and failing to meet the moment; if you haven’t read it, I suggest that you do as a preface to this one. But the charter school situation is even worse than described in that story; there is potentially catastrophic risk for public education finance and support for abortion and LGBTQ+ rights in the state. That’s because of a case captioned Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond. The case is set for oral argument in the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday, April 30, 2025.
The central issue in the case is:
If a state has a system of charter schools, must it include religious charter schools?
The Oklahoma Supreme Court said no, it couldn’t. The U.S. Supreme Court granted cert in January. Given the current makeup of the court, which has bent the Free Exercise Clause completely out of shape while ignoring the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the odds are pretty good that the Supreme Court will reverse and require states that permit charters to permit religious ones, too.
Minnesota obviously has charter schools, mostly “authorized” by private entities.
The case has attracted an amazing number of amici briefs, many of them having Catholic, Baptist, Christian, Covenant, Saint or Diocese in the filer’s name.
The Oklahoma Constitution has two clauses on education very similar to the Minnesota Constitution (not surprising; they are common to many state constitutions). The Oklahoma Constitution has an education clause, similar to our Education Clause, Art. XIII, Sec. 1 of the Minnesota Constitution. It also has a clause prohibiting aid to sectarian educational institutions, similar to – more expansive, really – our Art. XIII, Sec. 2. Article 2, Section 5 of the Oklahoma Constitution provides:
No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court concluded this provision, the Oklahoma charter school act, and the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment Establishment Clause prohibited a charter school contract with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. It also noted that the St. Isadore contract was different in material respects to the standard charter school contract with the state’s board.
The St. Isidore Contract varies significantly from the model contract. The St. Isidore Contract recognizes that certain rights, exemptions, or entitlements apply to St. Isidore as a religious organization under state and federal law, including the “ministerial exception” and aspects of the “church autonomy doctrine.” The St. Isidore Contract does not contain the model contract section titled “Prohibition of religious affiliation,” which provides that, except as permitted by applicable law, a charter school “shall be nonsectarian in its programs.” Instead, the St. Isidore Contract states that St. Isidore has the right to freely exercise its religious beliefs and practices consistent with its religious protections. Under the model contract, a charter school must warrant “that it is not affiliated with a nonpublic sectarian school or religious institution.” In the St. Isidore Contract, St. Isidore warrants that it is affiliated with a nonpublic sectarian school or religious institution.
If the U.S. Supreme Court approves St. Isadore’s charter school contract on Free Exercise Clause grounds in the face of the Oklahoma Constitution clause quoted above, Minnesota is a dead duck.
Not only will religious organizations like the Dioceses be clambering – and suing – to become charter school authorizers, every Catholic and other sectarian school in the state will become an authorized charter. The drain on genuine public schools will be enormous, maybe fatal.
We’ve seen the potential for this with the voucher schemes that have proliferated around the country which amount, in the main, to a subsidy of parents already sending their kids to private schools while beggaring the public school coffers.
This is obviously bad enough, but they’ll all claim the right to teach anti-abortion and anti-LGBT+ doctrine on the public dime. Swell. I don’t know about you, but I find this to be a hideous and offensive expenditure of my tax money.
Governor Tim Walz and DFL legislative leaders have touted Minnesota’s support for abortion and for transgender citizens’ rights, especially. We may continue to tout those rights in the face of spending public money to train the next generation of haters, even more than we already are.*
The Legislature, though, seems blissfully unaware of all of this, content to debate putting charter school board meeting videos on the internet.
The Legislature needs to wake up and do what it can to trim our bloated charter school system and protect public education from further private school predation.
* Some may say this harsh. But why do parochial schools exist, save to raise children in the tenets of the faith? In the case of the Catholics, those tenets include being anti-abortion, even when the mother may (or does) die, anti-gay and certainly anti-gay marriage, and anti-transgender rights. It cannot be gainsaid that these aren’t part of a Catholic parochial school education.
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