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The court rejected a religious charter school, but conservatives may get much of what they want in a school voucher program that passed the House this week.
May 23, 2025, 2:12 p.m. ET
A surprise Supreme Court ruling on Thursday prevented the nation’s first religious charter school from opening in Oklahoma, in a 4-to-4 vote that seemed to put the brakes on a conservative movement to expand government funding for religious education.
But the ruling may prove to be only a speed bump for the conservative education agenda.
Conservatives are poised to get much of what they want, and more, through a powerful school voucher movement that has raced through Republican state legislatures and is on the precipice of coming to all 50 states.
On the same day that the Supreme Court rejected government support for religious education in charter schools, the House narrowly passed an all-encompassing piece of domestic policy legislation that creates, for the first time, a federal school voucher program.
The bill sets aside $5 billion to fund vouchers for families, who can use the money to pay for K-12 private school tuition, home-schooling or virtual learning. It would bring vouchers even to liberal states like New York and California that have long resisted the concept, and is expected to reach as many as 1 million students nationwide with much of the money going to pay for religious education.
Nearly 80 percent of private school students attend a religiously affiliated school.
“On balance, this is a massive day of victory,” said Tommy Schultz, chief executive of the American Federation for Children, which supports the school voucher movement. Despite the Supreme Court ruling, he predicted “growth in religious school choice in America,” driven by increased political support for vouchers.
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