A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
A deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday effectively blocked the creation of the nation's first religious charter school in Oklahoma, leaving in place a state Supreme Court ruling that barred the establishment of overtly religious charter schools funded by the taxpayers. ing us now is NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg. Nina, there's an old saying in baseball that on a close play, tie goes to the runner. But what happens when the Supreme Court is tied, as they were - 4-4 - in this case? What does that mean?
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: The answer is, it's extremely temporary. It means only that the lower court decision - here, the state court's ruling - remains in place. And that decision said that establishing religious public charter schools would violate both the state and federal constitutions, as well as the federal law that helped create public charter schools. It's not a precedent to be relied on in the future. It's basically a punt.
MARTÍNEZ: Oh, perfect football term right there to go with my baseball term. Now, Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from participating in the case. Do we know why?
TOTENBERG: She didn't give any explanation, but the presumption is that it was because of her very close friend at Notre Dame Law School who was involved in bringing this case on behalf of two Catholic archdiocese that wanted to establish an overtly religious Catholic charter school that would be funded by the state.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. And do we know who voted how?
TOTENBERG: No. They don't usually do that in these tie votes. But we, I think, can tentatively conclude that the fourth vote to the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision likely came from Chief Justice Roberts, ed by the court's three liberals, and that the four remaining conservatives voted the other way.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. Now, what were the arguments of both sides?
TOTENBERG: The case was brought by two Catholic archdiocese in Oklahoma that wanted to create a Catholic public charter school that would be funded by the state, as are other charter schools. But unlike the other charter schools, the Catholic charter was to be overtly religious, serving as a, quote, "genuine instrument of the church." The church argued that by excluding parochial schools from the charter program, the state was discriminating against their religion. Countering that argument, the state contended that the charter schools are public schools, that they're funded by the state and closely supervised by the state and that allowing them to be religious schools would violate the constitution's mandate for separation between church and state.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. But do you expect a quick return of another case like this?
TOTENBERG: Maybe not quick. There isn't any case that's like this, right now, brewing in the lower courts. But when and if such a case reappears at the high court, which it probably will, the odds are that Justice Barrett, who has consistently ed religious rights, would do so again. And were that to happen, such a decision would, I think, radically change public education in the United States, and it might even have an adverse impact on charter schools, prompting some states to either cap their programs or to abandon them altogether rather than accept taxpayer-funded religious education. Yesterday, I talked to Starlee Coleman, the president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the umbrella group for the nation's 8,000 charter schools.
STARLEE COLEMAN: Charter schools have always been built on the idea that they are public schools. And if the Supreme Court were to say they're not actually public schools, their financial and operational structure would be completely thrown into chaos.
TOTENBERG: But, as I say, that's for another day.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR's legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg. Nina, thank you.
TOTENBERG: Thank you, A.
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