In news for Christian nationalists (CNs) and, whether they give a rip or not, everyone else in America, the USSC has taken up a case that has the potential to shift a significant amount of wealth and power to American churches generally. Yesterday, the USSC to accepted a lawsuit to decide whether states can reject religious charter schools from receiving public funding. CNN writes:
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether states may reject religious charter schools from receiving public funding, agreeing to hear arguments in an appeal out of Oklahoma involving the first such school in the nation.“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer,” said Jim Campbell, chief legal counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious legal group representing the school. “There’s great irony in state officials who claim to be in favor of religious liberty discriminating against St. Isidore because of its Catholic beliefs.”
The court will likely hear arguments this spring and hand down a decision before July. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, recused in the case without giving a reason.
The court’s decision could have vast nationwide implications by making it easier for religious entities to apply for and receive public taxpayer money for schools. The case has been closely watched by groups promoting religious freedom.
The court has a 6-3 Christian nationalist majority. It consistently backs various religious claims in the name of free speech and freedom of religion or the Free Exercise Clause of the 1st Amendment. To break down the church-state barrier, the Roberts court has been chipping away at the Establishment Clause for years. This lawsuit is over public funding for a proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in Oklahoma. That school would serve students online throughout the state while maintaining its intention to promote the Catholic faith. The USSC will review an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that said the proposal violated both the state and federal constitutions.
This lawsuit could have vast nationwide implications by giving religious entities the power to receive on demand public taxpayer money for religious schools. However, that might depend of whether state constitutions are worded differently. A USSC decision in favor of the church could amount to another blow to church-state separation, American democracy, the secular rule of law and civil liberties.
The following point cannot be overstated: For years, a cherished goal of the CN wealth and power movement has been to vastly expand the power of Christianity to demand and get legal access to state and federal tax revenues. Years of CN lawsuits have been pounding on the church-state separation legal doctrine and the Establishment Clause. Until now, that has limited the power of Christianity to get tax revenues. The Establishment Clause has already been seriously weakened.
AN IMPORTANT LEGAL NUANCE
So far, the Establishment Clause has prevented direct payments of tax dollars to churches or religion generally. But there is a ghastly but subtle sleight of hand that (i) CNs are arguing, and (ii) as it slowly nibbles away at the Establishment Clause, the USSC has increasingly allowed "indirect" tax payments to things like (1) vouchers for religious charter schools, (2) aid to groups or third parties who can spend those tax dollars on religion (see image below), and (3) a state program to improve playground surfaces at secular schools (the state was forced to pay for a religious school improvement). All of that amounts to a shift toward allowing direct funding for secular purposes to be spent at religious institutions.
The following money laundering scheme is legal right now:
1. Replace special interest with government
2. Replace politician with church or religion
3. Replace lobbyist with a group or third party
who spends tax dollars on religion
What this lawsuit probably quietly seeks to legalize is on the left
(but most CNs would probably deny that)
In a 2002 dissent against tax dollars for religious private schools, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that — regardless of the private choice made by voucher recipients — students using vouchers to attend religious schools receive “religious indoctrination at state expense.” Thus, the Cleveland [religious school] program ran afoul of the Establishment Clause. See the semantics here? Stevens spoke of tax payments as “religious indoctrination at state expense”, regardless of whether the funding was called direct or indirect.
Attacks on the Establishment Clause predate Roberts who has been on the USSC since 2005. Roberts is hostile to the Establishment Clause. Surprisingly, Justice Barrett has voluntarily recused herself from the St. Isidore case. Why recuse? Presumably, she did that due to her previous association with the University of Notre Dame Law School, where she was a faculty member. The school's religious liberty clinic is involved in representing the Catholic sponsors of St. Isidore, creating a potential conflict of interest.
If the USSC holds that St. Isidore has a right to state tax money, the decision will be announced at the end of June 2025, or maybe the first day or two of July. If the USSC rejects St. Isidore's application for state funding, the decision could come as much as a month or so before then. If St. Isidore wins, more tax dollars will flow go to Christianity and presumably other religions.
How much is this worth? That's hard to know
Federal tax breaks value to religion is approximately $2.4 billion annually by one estimate. State and local property tax exemptions are estimated by the Center for Inquiry in 2012 to be worth about $71 billion/year. Christianity rejects the state and local estimate, saying it is closer to about $6.9 billion. If the USSC gives religious schools access to tax dollars in this lawsuit, the value of that could add at least another $3-4 billion, but that is speculative and hard to estimate. Presumably, most or all other religious schools across the country will try to get state funding. There are about 22,000-27,000 religious private schools in the US, of which about 12,600 are Catholic, but estimates vary.
Churches tend to hide their finances or make analyzing financial data difficult. Churches and certain religious organizations are automatically considered tax-exempt under IRC Section 501(c)(3) without any need to even apply for this status. This automatic exemption means that many churches do not file for formal recognition, making collection and analysis of financial data hard to impossible. And although churches are automatically exempt at the federal level, state-level exemptions require applications, but the process and requirements vary significantly from state to state. This makes it difficult to aggregate data across states. In some situations, individual churches do not appear in IRS databases or public records, further obscuring the total value of tax breaks.
