Happy Memorial Day, CharterFolk.
My time is limited this weekend. My little daughter in the water …
… graduated from college on Sunday.
Fortunately, Tess has pledged to keep on raising me.
You have 24 hours left to get a vote in on the Contributor Columns from the last year that have most influenced our thinking. We’ll announce finalists next week.
We had a great one in the chute from Danyela Egorov, but literally minutes before it was set to go the SCOTUS announcement went public. So we decided to hold it until a moment when it will get the focus it deserves.
Meanwhile, I hope you found a moment for the CharterFolk X post about Dr. Thomas-McDavid that ran this week.
Sometimes we run from our calling, other times we go even harder right at it, as Garland’s life story so compellingly demonstrates.
It leads me back to the interview I did with Starlee last week.
We made sure most of the conversation focused on matters other than the Supreme Court case because we didn’t want to lose sight of the other progress and momentum that is happening across so much of the charter school movement right now.
A couple days after the SCOTUS announcement, it seems a prescient decision to have made.
Seven Aha’s to Take from This Week’s SCOTUS Decision
The ruling offers a chance to reflect on what I’ve written about this case, and on the steps we’ve taken here at CharterFolk over the past three years.
All in all, I would say we got most things just about right:
- Predicting, more than three years ago, that it was “written on the Supreme Court wall” that the Court would eventually take up this issue.
- Urging our sector to be more “agnostic” on church–state questions and to focus more squarely on the specific legal risks to charter schools if states were compelled to allow religious charters.
- Highlighting the “Titanic” damage that could be done to the charter school movement through an imprecise ruling.
- Trying to strike the right balance between being “Chicken Little” and “Just Plain Chicken” about potential outcomes.
- And questioning the widespread assumption — post-oral arguments — that the Court was poised to side with the St. Isidore camp.
I also think the CharterFolk Board got it right in deciding that our organization should serve as the contracting agent for the amicus brief filed by originating legislators, who made clear to the Court that their intent has always been for charter schools to remain public, nonsectarian institutions.
In the end, we’ve avoided a full-scale railroading of the charter school movement…
… but the Court may still be on track for a massive whoops that could undermine the education of nearly four million students.
With that in mind, here are seven aha’s from this week’s decision that could help us be better prepared for whatever comes next.
First, we must acknowledge that this is far from over.
Another case is moving through the 9th Circuit involving families denied access to religious curricula in homeschool settings. Meanwhile, several actors in Oklahoma are vowing to keep St. Isidore’s religious charter effort alive.
So steel yourselves, CharterFolk — this one isn’t going away.
Second, we should recognize that there is no coherent legal roadmap ahead.
Very little related to this case has played out with any guiding sense of intention:
- Religious liberty advocates assumed Republicans would remain united behind St. Isidore. They didn’t.
- Observers believed the Court wouldn’t have granted certiorari without having five votes lined up to overturn the Oklahoma ruling. That turned out to be wrong.
- No one knows whether Justice Barrett will continue to recuse herself from future cases involving religious charter schools. Her one vote could be decisive.
So don’t trust anyone who tells you they know which way this issue is headed. No one knows.
Third, one important thing we now do know is that some judges clearly see this case as distinct from the private religious school cases of recent years — Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson.
An assumption some held was that the Court would treat St. Isidore as essentially identical to those earlier decisions. But that assumption no longer holds.
The fact that the Court ruled as it did — and the fact that the Chief Justice himself opened oral arguments by emphasizing how this case differed from the private school ones — is perhaps one of the most important new developments of recent weeks.
Fourth, we’ve learned that religious liberty advocates have no charter-protective card up their sleeve.
When pressed by justices about the governance implications of their arguments, supporters of St. Isidore revealed that they’d be fine with an end state where thousands of charter schools would come back under direct government control.
This would effectively dismantle the autonomy that makes charter schools work, and would result in millions of students and families losing access to schools they value.
For years, many of us in CharterLand wondered whether religious liberty advocates might back off if it meant harming charter schools, or whether they had some legal argument that could protect charters from collateral damage.
Now we know: they don’t.
It’s sobering, given how many students and families would be adversely affected.
But, hey, at least it’s out in the open now.
Fifth, we’ve seen charter opponents forced to acknowledge a basic truth: charter schools are public schools.
The amicus brief filed by NEA, AFT, and other defenders of the status quo made that crystal clear before the highest court in the land.
Will that stop them from trotting out — whenever it suits them — the old line that charter schools are just a massive plot to privatize public education?
Of course not.
But now we have their own carefully crafted, formally submitted words to recite back to them the next time they make that argument.
And who knows?
Every once in a while, it might just help.
Sixth, we need to keep front and center the fact that the broader educational landscape has shifted dramatically since the original filing of the St. Isidore case.
By my count, 33 states have created or expanded private school choice programs. Twelve now have universal programs. That backdrop is fundamentally different from three years ago — and it profoundly reshapes the dynamics going forward.
Whereas once there were only a handful of ways to publicly fund religious education outside the charter context, we now have viable ESA or voucher pathways in over two-thirds of states.
So the case we now make is much clearer:
You want to fund private religious education?
Fine. Do it through an ESA, voucher or a tax credit.
But when it comes to charter schools?
Leave that lane public and nonsectarian, just as it was always intended to be.
Seventh, and finally — perhaps most importantly — we should recognize that the National Alliance played this situation just right.
Many in CharterLand questioned whether an “all-in” strategy to secure a 4–4 decision was viable.
But here we are.
It took a full legal press from the Alliance, executed nearly flawlessly.
Remarkable work.
Something that builds even greater confidence that, whatever lies ahead, the Alliance stands ready to represent the movement well.