Reform Jewish Leader Welcomes Supreme Court Decision Rejecting Religious Charter School

May 28, 2025 - In response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond blocking the establishment of the first religious charter school, Rabbi David Saperstein, Director Emeritus of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, released the following statement:

"We welcome the U.S. Supreme Court's decision today that upholds a lower court ruling rejecting the use of public tax dollars to support a faith-based charter school. In so doing, the decision upholds the principle that the American value of separation of church and state includes a bar on direct government funding of religious education. To have permitted tax dollar funded sectarian charter schools would have opened the floodgates to such schemes, gravely diverting financial support from America's secular public school systems. Church-state separation, as well as such investment in the American public school system, has, over a number of past generations, allowed countless minority communities, including Jews, to have access to the learning so vital to contributing our society and to building flourishing lives in the United States.

We were honored to join an interfaith brief in this case, coordinated by our long-time ally, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. The brief makes clear that direct government funding of religious education can be harmful to religion itself, by entangling spheres that should remain distinct for each to thrive. To incorporate the teaching of religion into a publicly-funded school's practices and curriculum, such as in the case of the Catholic St. Isidore, will lead to discrimination against students with diverse beliefs. Religious freedom means allowing students and their families to make their own decisions about faith, without concern for their ability to receive an education. We must continue to ensure that all public schools, including charter schools, remain secular and open to all students."