News
Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Religious Charter School in Oklahoma
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday over the fate of the nation’s first religious charter school, in Oklahoma, which seeks to use government money to teach a curriculum infused by Catholic doctrine.
In earlier cases from Maine and Montana, the court ruled that states that decide to create programs to help parents pay for private schools must allow them to choose religious ones. The main question in the new case is whether the First Amendment permits — or even requires — states to sponsor and finance religious charter schools, which are public schools with substantial autonomy.
The Oklahoma school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, is to be operated by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa and aims to incorporate Catholic teachings into every aspect of its activities.
A ruling in favor of the school could affect laws in 45 other states that authorize charter schools. It would also blur a line established in earlier Supreme Court cases distinguishing between government money provided to parents to spend on private schools, including religious ones, and government support provided directly to religious schools.
The dispute is the third major case dealing with religion to be argued before the justices in the space of about a month. In March, the court seemed poised to rule that a Catholic charity in Wisconsin was entitled to a tax exemption that had been denied by a state court on the grounds that the charity’s activities were not primarily religious. Last week, the court signaled that it was likely to rule that parents with religious objections may withdraw their children from classes in which storybooks with L.G.B.T.Q. themes are discussed.
After Oklahoma’s charter school board approved the proposal to open St. Isidore, the state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, a Republican, sued to stop it. Mr. Drummond said a religious public school would violate the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion and the State Constitution’s ban on spending public money to support religious institutions.
He said the school crossed a line drawn by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist in a 2002 Supreme Court decision that distinguished “between government programs that provide aid directly to religious schools” as opposed to “programs of true private choice, in which government aid reaches religious schools only as a result of the genuine and independent choices of private individuals.”
Lawyers for St. Isidore countered in a court filing that it “hopes to offer another educational option for Oklahomans, and no student will be compelled to attend St. Isidore.” They added that “the school will receive students, and state funding, only through the private choices of families.”
The school said it would welcome students of “different faiths or no faith.” It was less categorical about teachers, saying that all Oklahoma charter schools are free to adopt their own personnel policies.
The state’s Supreme Court ruled against the school, with the majority saying it would “create a slippery slope” that could lead to “the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion without fear of governmental intervention.”
“St. Isidore is a public charter school,” the majority said, noting that the state law allowing such schools requires them to be nonsectarian. “Under both state and federal law,” the majority ruled, “the state is not authorized to establish or fund St. Isidore.”
In the most recent decision from the U.S. Supreme Court about government support for religious schools, Carson v. Makin in 2022, the majority ruled that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program.
But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said that “Maine may provide a strictly secular education in its public schools.”
In dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who retired that year, said that even Maine’s program, limited to private schools, was problematic.
“Members of minority religions, with too few adherents to establish schools, may see injustice in the fact that only those belonging to more popular religions can use state money for religious education,” Justice Breyer wrote. “Taxpayers may be upset at having to finance the propagation of religious beliefs that they do not share and with which they disagree.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the Oklahoma case, Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, No. 24-394, but has not said why. She was a law professor at Notre Dame, whose religious liberty clinic represents the charter school, and is close friends with Nicole Garnett, a professor there who has assisted St. Isidore.
new video loaded: Another Night of Violent Protests Outside a Newark ICE Detention Center
transcript
transcript
Another Night of Violent Protests Outside a Newark ICE Detention Center
Protesters and the police clashed again outside of an ICE detention center in New Jersey on Saturday night.
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“Shut down Delaney Hall.” “Shut down Delaney Hall.” “Mikie Sherrill, do better. Mikie Sherrill, do better.”
By Cynthia Silva
May 31, 2026
Family visitation at the Delaney Hall immigration detention center is being restored to at least part of the facility, New Jersey’s governor and US homeland security officials confirmed on Sunday morning, after a week during which heated demonstrations at the site were met with aggressive policing tactics.
Meanwhile, families of detained immigrants grappled with conflicting information about exactly whom among them would get visitation after the announcement from governor Mikie Sherrill and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). And local officials by Sunday had also indefinitely imposed an overnight curfew beginning at 9pm for a blocked-off area including Delaney Hall.
Delaney Hall visitation had been canceled after detained immigrants began carrying out an ongoing hunger and labor strike inside the detention center – which prompted protests outside the facility in support of those striking.
Facility staff confirmed to the Guardian on Sunday that what are known as units 1 and 3 were given visitation beginning at about noon and 2pm local time, respectively.
Unit 1 is a women’s section of the facility. Unit 2 is where the majority of the hunger-striking detainees are based, and it was unclear on Sunday whether it would have access to family visitation.
Sherrill’s office and the private prison company GEO Group, which runs the facility, did not respond to a request for comment. The road leading to Delaney Hall is now fully blocked by police, except for families attempting to visit detained loved ones, state officials announced on Sunday afternoon.
The governor’s announcement and subsequent confusion by families followed a night of violent clashes outside the facility between local officials and protesters. In the aftermath of that, Newark’s mayor, Ras Baraka, responded by activating a curfew for the area surrounding Delaney Hall.
The curfew would be in place nightly from 9pm to 6am “until further notice”, said Baraka’s office, which threatened arrest or legal action if people did not disperse during that time.
On Sunday morning, Sherrill and other top New Jersey state officials said that three people were arrested on Saturday night as a result of clashes with police. State officials said those arrest happened after a group of protesters attacked police and a barrier.
The Delaney Hall protests and clashes have become the latest flashpoint in the growing opposition to the aggressive anti-immigrant tactics Donald Trump’s administration has implemented nationwide throughout his second presidency.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains immigrants in its network of facilities across the US while the cases of those detained play out in courts.
ICE detention centers have been repeatedly criticized for harsh conditions.
Hakeem Jeffries, the top US House Democrat of nearby New York, conducted an oversight visit of Delaney Hall on Sunday, and said the conditions of confinement “shock the conscience”.
On 22 May, a group of immigrants detained inside Delaney Hall detention announced a hunger and labor strike inside the facility, demanding improved conditions, medical care, a meeting with Sherrill and for their immigration cases to proceed. Between 300 and 400 detainees have since participated in the strike.
Protests began shortly thereafter, with lawmakers attempting to visit the facility. The facility gained further national attention after ICE officers pepper-sprayed US senator Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat, outside the facility during a skirmish there on Monday.
ICE officers have used pepper spray as well as stun guns throughout the demonstrations. They have also shoved and arrested protesters.
On Friday, Sherrill and other top New Jersey officials announced that state police would replace ICE officers outside Delaney Hall. The state police set up road blocks around half a mile on either side of the detention center.
That night clashes erupted after state police officers began moving in on protesters. State police officials on horseback moved through the crowd. Other state police officers in riot gear shot teargas canisters at protesters, aggressively shoving demonstrators and arresting six.
Advocates present at Delaney Hall on Saturday repeatedly criticized Sherrill, a Democrat, for her response to the protests.
“The escalation that happened [on Friday] was ten times worse than what ICE was doing to everyone prior nights,” Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of the New York Immigrant Coalition, said in an interview on Saturday outside of the facility. “If anything, the escalators were the state police.”
A statement from Sherill on Saturday announcing the restoration of family visitation at Delaney Hall claimed DHS had “met our demand”. But DHS refuted the governor’s statement.
“To be clear: Visitation was only suspended because of violent riots,” a DHS spokesperson said. “Now that we have a secure perimeter, visitation can resume.”
Methodology
The illustrations of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s plumbing system were drawn from National Park Service documents produced as part of its renovations and reviewed by people with knowledge of the project. The layout of the expansion joints was derived from photographic evidence and a 2013 report released as part of a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
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