Oklahoma school Superintendent Ryan Walters is on a mission. We're bringing the Bible back to school. We're bringing prayer back to school, and we're going to be the first to offer religious charter schools. If Walters is successful, Saint Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School [00:00:16] would be the first of its kind. The only taxpayer funded religious charter school in the country, the highest court in the country, deadlocked on this question of whether there should be a religiously taxpayer funded religious charter school. [00:00:31] The Oklahoma Supreme Court's ruling saying the school cannot go forward will be upheld. You heard that right. With a deadlocked decision earlier today, the United States Supreme Court effectively blocked the creation of the nation's [00:00:46] first public religious charter school. That would have funneled our taxpayer money toward Catholic infused curriculum, which, sounds unconstitutional. But unfortunately for Supreme Court justices voted [00:01:03] in favor of allowing this to happen. For other Supreme Court justices voted against it, Amy Coney Barrett decided to recuse herself, and that made all the difference. Now it's unclear, like what the specific reason was for her recusal, [00:01:20] but I should note that it probably stemmed from her close ties to Notre Dame Law School, where she worked as a professor, and she's also close friends with a woman by the name of Nicole Garnett, who's a professor at Notre Dame Law School who is a leading proponent [00:01:35] of religious charter schools and was an advisor for Saint Isidore. So she's got a conflict of interest there. And to her credit, she did the right thing and decided to recuse herself. And again, that made all the difference. So, as NPR explains, the heart of this case really had to do with two [00:01:52] Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma that tried to establish a publicly funded Catholic school known as Saint Isidore of Seville, as a charter school. But that move would conflict with both federal charter school laws and similar state laws mandating that [00:02:09] charter schools have to be public schools and are funded publicly and closely supervised by the state, of course. So this means that the curriculum must be non-religious, nonsectarian. So Saint Isidore had sought to challenge their status as public schools, arguing [00:02:27] that it would instead be a private school in contract with the government. Okay. Interestingly, though, and this part really did surprise me, one of the biggest obstacles to making this happen for like the religious right was a Republican attorney general. [00:02:43] So Oklahoma's Republican attorney general. His name is, Guenter Drummond, sued to block the school's creation. In fact, in a social media post this week, on Thursday, he Drummond said that he was proud to have fought against this potential cancer in our state. [00:03:04] That's a Republican attorney general. And he referred to this effort of funneling taxpayer money to a religious charter school, a cancer in our state. I'm shocked by that. I'm so shocked by that. This is Oklahoma, too. Wow. Okay. [00:03:21] So, first of all, another shocking fact is that the Supreme Court is 6 to 3 conservative, and we somehow won 4 to 4, right? Because it's, a tie in this case goes to, [00:03:37] not allowing it. And so, it turns out Justice Roberts switched sides on this one. Look, if they had any, you know, principles, they would call balls and strikes. As Roberts said, is it okay to fund religious schools with taxpayer money? [00:03:57] Of course not. It's establishing a religion. It's picking one religion over others. So if that's really allowed, states can fund, madrasas. Those are Muslim, schools that teach Sharia law. [00:04:12] So should we spend taxpayer money funding those schools? Nope. That's absurd. Of course not. Right. And so it's also true of any religion. So including this one. So if you had any principles, you'd obviously be against it. But of course, for Supreme Court justices, were in favor of it, [00:04:28] but luckily they lost. - That's amazing and wonderful. - And you should latch on to this story. Hold on tight, because that's the only good news today. So. Yeah. All right. We'll take our wins where we can get them. Yes. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. [00:04:45] Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.