Extremists insist you fund religious schools
They are relentless. Give them that. The investor class backed by useful idiots among Christian nationalists are determined to tear public education down to the foundations. Just as the fringe right finally ended women’s right to bodily autonomy with Dobbs, education remains in the crosshairs. They’re teeing up another Supreme Court test case (Politico):
Groups aligned with the conservative legal movement and its financial architect, Leonard Leo, are working to promote a publicly funded Christian school in Oklahoma, hoping to create a test case to change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.
At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The school received preliminary approval from the state’s charter school board in June. If it survives legal challenges, it would open the door for state legislatures across the country to direct taxpayer funding to the creation of Christian or other sectarian schools.
They want that separation of church and state gone and some of that sweet, sweet public tax money going to teach flat earth theory and creation “science.” And they have Leo and a “billion-dollar network of nonprofits” backing them.
“The Christian conservative legal movement, which has its fingerprints all over what’s going on in Oklahoma, is a pretty small, tight knit group of individuals,” said Paul Collins, a legal studies and politics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “They recognize the opportunity to get a state to fund a religious institution is a watershed moment,” said Collins, author of Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, adding that“They have a very, very sympathetic audience at the Supreme Court. When you have that on the Supreme Court you’re going to put a lot of resources into bringing these cases quickly.”
In Oklahoma, the legal team representing the state’s virtual charter school board, the Alliance Defending Freedom [ADF], helped develop arguments that led to the end of Roe v. Wade. It is significantly funded by donor-advised funds that allow their patrons to keep their identities secret but which receive large amounts of money from Leo-aligned groups.
Who are they?
They include Donors Trust, often called the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement. In recent years, Donors Trust has been the largest single beneficiary of Leo’s primary dark money group, the Judicial Education Project. Donors Trust, in turn, gave $4 million to Leo’s Federalist Society in 2022, according to the IRS filings.
Since 2020, when Leo received a $1.6 billion windfall from Chicago electronics magnate Barre Seid, among the largest contributions to a political advocacy group in history, other groups funded by Leo’s network have become substantial contributors to ADF. For instance, Schwab Charitable Fund, which has given at least $4 million to ADF, received $153 million in 2021 from a new Leo-aligned nonprofit that received the Seid funding.
ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler said in an emailed statement that his group is defending the board “in order to ensure people of faith are not treated like second-class citizens.” Sechler, who said he “cannot predict” whether the case will land at the Supreme Court, did not comment on the group’s funding.
If you believe donors like Schwab are in it for constitutional principle, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Let me repeat, investors see the hundreds of billions the states spend each year on public education as “The Big Enchilada“:
Here’s what we are doing. The collective We are abetting the investor class in raiding the public purse for its own gain. Investors have coopted religious conservatives to help divert funds from public schools the country has supported since the Articles of Confederation to private school vouchers and to charter schools.
Why? They want the billion$. Public education is required by 48 state constitutions. It’s the largest annual budget item in all 50 states. Here’s a recent one from Noth Carolina. Your state budget looks similar.
If you think the conservative furor over critical race theory and grooming and book bans is about culture war issues, you probably think George W. Bush’s push to privatize Social Security was about getting you, Average Taxpayer, a better long-term return on your paycheck witholdings.
It’s about the money. What stands between the investor class and the hundreds of billions states spend, not-for-profit, on public education annually are teachers and school custodians and school administers and state boards of education. They’ve got to go.
Just as Republicans spent decades undermining public confidence in free and fair elections to pave the way for a one-party state, the investor class has worked quietly at diverting more and more public tax dollars away from public schools to charters and voucher programs. Religious conservatives are useful idiots in the project.
“Venture capitalists and for-profit firms are salivating over the exploding $788.7 billion market in K-12 education,” read the subhead on Lee Fang’s warning in 2014. Like I said, they are relentless.
There are few services more American than public education:
Public education required by stateship acts (of 37 states) = 14
Land reserved for public schools (of 37 states) = 24
Public education required by state constitutions = 48
Public education free per state constitutions = 35
One more time (from a decade ago):
John Adams (a tea party favorite) wrote in 1785, “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”
To that purpose, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (passed under the Articles of Confederation prior to ratification of the U.S. Constitution) called for new states formed from what is now the American Midwest to encourage “schools and the means of education,” and the Enabling Act of 1802 signed by President Thomas Jefferson (for admitting the same Ohio that Santorum visited on Saturday) required — as a condition of statehood — the establishment of schools and public roads, funded in part by the sale of public lands. Enabling acts for later states followed the 1802 template, establishing permanent funds for public schools, federal lands for state buildings, state universities and public works projects (canals, irrigation, etc.), and are reflected in state constitutions from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The practice continued up to and including the enabling act for the admission of Hawaii in 1959 as America’s 50th state, for example (emphasis added):
(f) The lands granted to the State of Hawaii by subsection (b) of this section and public lands retained by the United States under subsections (c) and (d) and later conveyed to the State under subsection (e), together with the proceeds from the sale or other disposition of any such lands and the income therefrom, shall be held by said State as a public trust for the support of the public schools and other public educational institutions, for the betterment of the conditions of native Hawaiians, as defined in the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, 1920, as amended, for the development of farm and home ownership on as widespread a basis as possible for the making of public improvements, and for the provision of lands for public use. Such lands, proceeds, and income shall be managed and disposed of for one or more of the foregoing purposes in such manner as the constitution and laws of said State may provide, and their use for any other object shall constitute a breach of trust for which suit may be brought by the United States. The schools and other educational institutions supported, in whole or in part out of such public trust shall forever remain under the exclusive control of said State; and no part of the proceeds or income from the lands granted under this Act shall be used for the support of any sectarian or denominational school, college, or university.
The workaround Leo, investors, and ADF pursue now is to eliminate the separation of church and state so the public expense of educating America’s children extends to their religious and private, for-profit education (without state supervision or standards, I might add).
They’ll claim their court case is about freedom and principle. No, it’s about the money. It’s always about the money.