President Donald J. Trump, who watched from the gallery Wednesday in unprecedented fashion while the government made its case, signed an on his first day back in office last year banning birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. His plan would also exclude babies born here whose parents are temporary residents.

Birthright citizenship was enshrined in the Constitution in 1868 by the 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

Solicitor General D. John Sauer, arguing for the government, told the court he recognized the amendment was adopted just after the Civil War to grant citizenship to those newly freed from enslavement and their children, “whose allegiance to the United States had been established by generations of domicile here.” 

It did not, however, grant citizenship to the children of temporary visitors or illegal aliens, he said. And, Sauer maintained, unlike newly freed people, “those visitors lack direct and immediate allegiance to the United States.”

“For aliens, lawful domicile is the status that creates the requisite allegiance,” he said. “For decades following the clause’s adoption, commentators recognized that the children of temporary visitors are not citizens, and illegal aliens lack the legal capacity to establish domicile here. Unrestricted birthright citizenship contradicts the practice of the overwhelming majority of modern nations. It demeans the priceless and profound gift of American citizenship.”

Several of the justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, appeared skeptical of Sauer’s reasoning, peppering him with pointed questions and casting doubt on key elements of his argument. 

Many believe Trump is likely to lose this constitutional battle, though he has that hinged on presidential powers. Conservatives hold a 6-3 majority, with three of the justices in that bloc — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — Trump appointees from his first term.

Cecilla Wang, the ACLU’s national legal director and lead attorney in the case that involves several statewide ACLUs and other legal advocacy groups, argued on behalf of the mothers and babies who would be affected by Trump’s order. In a less than three-minute opening statement, she said the 14th amendment is critical to our nation’s understanding of itself.

“Ask any American what our citizenship rule is, and they’ll tell you: Everyone born here is a citizen alike,” said Wang, whose Taiwanese parents came to the U.S. as graduate students. “That rule was enshrined in the 14th Amendment to put it out of the reach of any government official to destroy.”

Birthright citizenship was codified and protected by the , which provided that “person[s] born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” 

This came decades after another critically related ruling, the 1898 Supreme Court case , which challenged the citizenship of a Chinese-American San Francisco resident. Ark, who was denied re-entry into the U.S. after visiting his parents in China, was found to be protected by the 14th amendment.��

Wang believes that case bolsters her argument. She said, too, Trump’s executive order would throw the country into chaos. The president left the court minutes into her remarks. 

“The 14th Amendment’s fixed, bright-line rule has contributed to the growth and thriving of our nation,” she said. “It comes from text and history. It is workable, and it prevents manipulation. The executive order fails on all those counts. Swathes of Americans would be rendered stateless. Thousands of American babies will immediately lose their citizenship. And if you credit the government’s theory, the citizenship of millions of Americans — past, present and future — could be called into question.”

While some members seemed more amenable to her arguments, conservative Justice Samuel Alito asked her about babies born in the United States who do not automatically become citizens, including the children of ambassadors, for example. 

“If those who framed and adopted the 14th Amendment had wanted to limit the citizenship test to just those specific groups that you concede fall outside the birthright rule, why didn’t they refer to those groups?” he asked. 

Wang said the answer was baked into the 14th amendment by the language that guarantees citizenship outside a few rare exceptions of those not “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Gorsuch said Wang had “good stuff on her side.” She, in turn, said the Trump administration’s proposed approach to citizenship contradicts what earlier leaders sought to achieve. 

“We can’t take the current administration’s policy considerations into account … to radically reinterpret the 14th amendment,” Wang said, adding she believed those who ratified it did, in fact, consider future immigration. “Contrary to the government’s arguments now, they wanted to grow this country, make sure we had a citizenry, populate the military and settle the country.”

But Sauer, the solicitor general, said birthright citizenship, as it stands, is “a powerful pull factor for illegal immigration and rewards illegal aliens who not only violate the immigration laws, but also jump in front of those who follow the rules.” 

And, he said, there is another problem. 

“It has spawned a sprawling industry of birth tourism as unaccounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have fought to give birth in the United States in recent decades, creating a whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties to the United States,” he said. 

When asked whether the government knew how many women came to the U.S. specifically to give birth, Sauer could not provide a solid figure. 

Several of the justices also questioned Sauer about his key argument that established legal domicile must exist to qualify for birthright citizenship, asking whether it referred to the domicile of parents or their offspring.

“Under the minimum definition of domicile,” Alito said, “a person’s domicile is the place where he or she intends to make a permanent home.” 

Normally, Alito said, one would think a person who is subject to arrest and removal could not establish domicile. But, he said, we have a unique situation in the United States where people may live here for years and be subject to deportation yet, “have in their minds made a permanent home here and have established roots — and that raises a humanitarian problem.”

Lower courts on numerous occasions have found Trump’s order unconstitutional and blocked its implementation. Since it was issued, Trump has launched a massive deportation campaign that has harmed students and schools and become with the American people — particularly after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.

“This is potentially the most important civics lesson of a generation,” said Adam Strom, co-founder and executive director of Re-Imagining Migration. “Ultimately, birthright citizenship is about who gets to claim their place in this country … stripping that in a moment of aggressive immigration enforcement could render (children) stateless.”

Such a person is not recognized as a citizen of any nation and therefore has very limited protection. The U.N. estimated in 2019 that there were more than 4.2 million stateless  people around the world but the actual number is believed to be more than . 

Alejandra Vázquez Baur, a fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, and director of the said undoing birthright citizenship would be a “disaster” for hospitals and a “nightmare for families” — regardless of their status — as they would have to prove citizenship for their newborn child to have basic human rights.   

“It’s no coincidence that they’re seeking to strip birthright citizenship protections for U.S.-born children of immigrants while simultaneously attacking the foundational right to education for all granted by Plyler v. Doe,” she said, referring to the 1982 Supreme Court ruling that a child cannot be denied a public education based on their immigration status. 

“Together, these attacks undermine our democracy and threaten to create an underclass of millions of children with uncertain futures and no rights in this country,” she said. “It is fundamentally immoral, unconstitutional, anti-child and un-American.”

The court is expected to render a decision in late June or early July.

was originally reported by Kate Sosin of .��

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 Tuesday that a Colorado ban on conversion therapy for youth violates the free speech rights of a Christian counselor, clearing the way for a practice that goes against the recommendations of every major medical association in the country.

Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson .

“Today’s reckless decision means more American kids will suffer,” she said. “The Court has weaponized free-speech in order to prioritize anti-LGBTQ+ bias over the safety, health and wellbeing of children.”

Conversion therapy is a in which providers attempt to change a youth’s sexual orientation or gender identity, often through extremely harsh methods including acts of physical, psychological and sexual abuse against minors — , chemically induced nausea and hypnosis, among others.

The and recommended it be banned.�� Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., have laws banning conversion therapy for minors.

The decision comes on , a global day celebrating transgender lives and culture every March 31.

Some LGBTQ+ advocates note that while the ruling favors a discredited practice, it leaves most avenues of regulating conversion therapy untouched.

“I think the most important thing to understand about the decision today is that it only takes one way of regulating conversion therapy off the table,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights.

Tuesday’s ruling throws out Colorado’s ban, but does not strike down bans in other states, which advocates feared could be a worst-case scenario. The case, Chiles v. Salazar, was brought by Christian counselor Kaley Chiles, who argued that the ban violated her free speech rights. Chiles says she only offers talk therapy and does not use physical interventions or prescribe medications.

The ruling does not declare conversion therapy safe or effective. It also leaves intact the ability of medical licensing boards’ to investigate conversion therapy practice as fraudulent.

Minter said in a statement that the ruling still leaves room to discipline providers in states where it is banned.

“This decision is narrowly about how conversion therapy can be regulated. It does not mean that conversion therapy is safe or legal. Conversion therapy is still medical malpractice and consumer fraud,” Minter said. “Every major medical organization in this country condemns it. Survivors can still bring malpractice and consumer fraud claims.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that Colorado’s law applies beyond “physical interventions,” and restricts free speech.

“Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same,” the opinion read. “But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country. It reflects instead a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth.”

The majority held that the right to free speech applies equally to licensed medical professionals as to all Americans.

As the lone dissent, argued that the majority “failed to appreciate the crucial context” of Chiles’ case. “Chiles is not speaking in the ether; she is providing therapy to minors as a licensed healthcare professional,” she wrote.

Neither side disputed Colorado’s authority to regulate medical treatments and providers or claimed that a state doing so is unconstitutional, she said.

“So, in my view, it cannot also be the case that Colorado’s decision to restrict a dangerous therapy modality that, incidentally, involves provider speech is presumptively unconstitutional,” Jackson added. “In concluding otherwise, the Court’s opinion misreads our precedents, is unprincipled and unworkable and will eventually prove untenable for those who rely upon the long-recognized responsibility of states to regulate the medical profession for the protection of public health.”

This is the first of three LGBTQ+ blockbuster cases before the court this term. Two others, , were heard at the same time earlier this year.

Grace Panetta contributed reporting.

Two months after the U.S. Supreme Court granted public school parents the right to withdraw their children from materials and discussions on LGBTQ+ issues and other subjects that conflict with their “sincerely held religious beliefs,” conservative leaders in California are predicting schools will be swamped with opt-out demands. 

That hasn’t happened yet, but attorneys agree that this latest escalation of the culture wars will likely cause turmoil, confusion, and years of litigation, largely because the court offered no guidance on how opt-out requests should be handled, how religious belief claims can or should be verified, and how schools should handle potential logistical issues.

“There is a lot of trepidation about how to handle this issue in a way that is legally compliant and doesn’t trigger a backlash from one side of the issue or the other,” Troy Flint, a spokesperson for the California School Boards Association, told EdSource via email Saturday night.

“Superintendents have concerns about how to make a fact-specific determination regarding parent requests, and we have heard of districts getting threats of litigation from both sides,” he said.

LGBTQ+ advocates and defenders of the state’s progressive school standards are threatening discrimination lawsuits if opt-outs are granted, Flint said. Parents are threatening to sue if they aren’t granted immediately.

In most districts, he added, leaders “are hesitant to address this publicly for fear of attracting more scrutiny and making the issue even more difficult to manage.”

A leading academic on education law said that while the Supreme Court decision was based on parental objections to LGBTQ+ books and lessons, the religious opt-outs are likely to have a broader reach.

“It is deeply misguided for people to believe that this case is only about LGBTQ+ and equality,” Yale Law School professor Justin Driver told EdSource. The decision “sweeps, given the prevalence of deeply felt religious objections, to lots of material,” he said.

It could “affect everything from reading to science, to literature to history. It’s difficult to overstate the significance of the decision,” Driver said. “Some people think Bert and Ernie are gay. Is ‘Sesame Street’ now suspect?”

California, for instance, requires students to learn the history of gay people fighting for civil rights and the story of the country’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk. The San Francisco supervisor was assassinated in 1978 and posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President Barack Obama.

Flint said that parents “in at least one district have hinted at trying to expand the opt-out requests to other types of instructional materials.” He did not identify those materials.

Meanwhile, as school administrators ponder their next steps, firebrand social conservatives are seizing the moment that the nation’s highest court created.

“There should be opt-outs. There are things that go against what God laid down,” pastor Angelo Frazier, of Bakersfield’s RiverLakes Community Church, said of what’s taught in California schools. 

“It’s not education. It’s ‘You can touch me here.’ It’s very suggestive and inappropriate.” He said the ruling was a relief to frustrated parents in his congregation. “It gives them breathing room.”

The leader of a Fresno-based Christian group, long involved in parental rights advocacy, said the state is no longer in charge of what children learn in school.

The ruling shows that “parents are the ultimate determination of whose values get taught to the child,” said Greg Burt of the California Family Council. “We’re now in charge of deciding what we think is good and what we think is not good.”

But as opt-outs begin to play out across California’s more than 10,000 public schools as the 2025-26 academic year opens, the only certainty from the case,  is that uncertainties abound — and may for years.

They include:

• Can or should parents file blanket opt-out requests stating they want their child removed from any and all instruction about LGBTQ+ topics, and leave school personnel to sort it out? Or should schools ask parents to review reading lists — often available online — and let parents flag those items to which they object? 
• What do school leaders do with students whose parents opt them out of a class? Their class time still needs to be used for instruction. Where do they go?
• Who watches or instructs the youngest of removed students, who can’t be left unsupervised? Some of the books cited in the Supreme Court case, including ones about a child’s favorite uncle marrying a man and a puppy getting lost at a Pride parade, are used in kindergarten and even transitional kindergarten classes.
• Will school districts need to budget money to defend lawsuits from parents whose opt-out requests may be denied? 
• Can parents even attempt to opt out their child from exposure to an LGBTQ+ teacher, or a teacher who displays a Pride flag in a classroom?

Lawyers and academics interviewed for this story said that Justice Samuel Alito’s decision, joined by the court’s five other conservatives, offered little guidance on how opt-outs should work.  

Mahmoud v. Taylor happened because the Montgomery County schools in suburban Maryland created an opt-out program to appease parents who objected to the teaching of LGBTQ+ materials on religious grounds. But the program ended in less than a year. Alito noted in his decision that school officials found that “individual principals and teachers could not accommodate the growing number of opt-out requests without causing significant disruptions to the classroom environment.” Parents then sued.

Focusing largely on principles of religious freedom, Alito’s decision doesn’t specifically address how opt-outs might work given the Maryland situation, or how claims of a sincerely held religious belief might be evaluated. 

The high court has long recognized the rights of parents to “direct the religious upbringing of their children,” he wrote, a principle at the case’s core.

But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonja Sotomayor predicted opt-outs would cause “chaos for this nation’s public schools.”

Giving parents the chance to opt out of all lessons and story times that conflict with their beliefs “will impose impossible administrative burdens,” Sotomayor wrote. It threatens the very essence of public education.

&�Բ�����;“The reverberations of the court’s error will be felt, I fear, for generations.”

Opting out in California

Conservative groups in California opposed to LGBTQ+ themed teaching materials are generating letters and emails to school districts for parents to use to demand that school leaders proactively remove children from classes where there might be any mention of gay or transgender people, same-sex marriage and other related topics.

A nonprofit Riverside County law firm, Advocates for Faith & Freedom, created calling for children to be removed from any teaching involving “gender identity, the use of pronouns inconsistent with biological sex, sexual activity or intercourse of any kind, sexual orientation, or any LGBTQ+ topics” so parents can raise children “in the fear and knowledge of the Lord.”

The letter gives principals 10 calendar days to respond in writing. Lack of a response “will be considered a denial” that will cause parents to “proceed accordingly.”  

Erin Mersino, an attorney at the firm, said via email, “responses were just starting to come in,” and that it was too soon to discuss the letter’s effectiveness. Other groups are circulating at least four similar opt-out templates or email forms.  

The 10-day response demand in the nonprofit’s letter “is insufficient in my opinion,” said Mark Bresee, a La Jolla attorney specializing in education law.

Bresee also questioned if “a blanket, year-long ‘opt-out’ demand” is consistent with Alito’s decision, noting that the justice wrote that the “religious development of a child will always be fact-intensive. It will depend on the specific religious beliefs and practices asserted, as well as the specific nature of the educational requirement or curricular feature at issue.”

It’s unclear how far and fast those letters are circulating. Some school officials said they have received a few opt-out notices.

Conservative activist Brenda Lebsack, a Santa Ana Unified School District board member, said mass opt-out requests are unlikely to come until school districts themselves notify parents of the new right the court granted. “Opt-out forms should really be coming from the schools because if you’re getting opt-out forms from all these different law firms, and they’re all different, that could get really confusing,” she said. 

At the Manteca Unified School District in San Joaquin County, Assistant Superintendent Victoria Brunn said late last week that only one “opt-out request has been received so far. She said the parents who made it were told it would be granted. 

A spokesperson for the Turlock Unified School District in Stanislaus County said it had received a single inquiry about the opt-out process and created a standard form for requests, but that no requests had been received. Parents can either use the form or email a teacher, citing&�Բ�����;“specific instructional content” a student should not receive, according to a copy provided to EdSource.

“Teachers can also provide notice of upcoming curriculum,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

At the Hope Elementary School District in Santa Barbara County, Superintendent Anne Hubbard created an opt-out form. As of Friday, it had been used once to opt out two children in the same family, she said. 

Last week, the board of the 85-student Howell Mountain Elementary School District in Napa County canceled plans to create an opt-out form after community objections.

“Howell Mountain Elementary respects and values the LGBTQ+ community. We will not be adopting any type of opt-out form that specifically targets LGBTQ+ curriculum,” Superintendent Joshua Munoz said in a statement. Instead, the district will remind parents annually that the right to opt out exists, but will not cite any specific curriculum.

 that among those who spoke to the board was a St. Helena High School junior who’d attended Howell Mountain.

“When I was in seventh grade, I realized that I liked girls,” she said. “In school, the times that we were taught about LGBTQ+ people would remind me that I was not alone. I was not a freak or an alien. I was just me. And I could still do anything I wanted in my life.”

In San Francisco, Mawan Omar, the parent of a sixth grader, told EdSource he intends to opt his son out of LGBTQ+ materials because the teaching contradicts his family’s Muslim faith.  

Omar said his son, Hezma, objected on his own to an LGBTQ+ lesson in elementary school because it was contrary to what he had learned from the Holy Quran. “He just didn’t want to be around it because he knows our religion,” Omar said. After what he described as a dispute with the school’s principal, it was agreed informally that Hezma would be allowed to leave any classes involving similar materials.�� 

Now, Alito’s decision, Omar said, is gratifying. “We knew all along we were right.”

But Lebsack, who focuses on transgender issues and has formed an interfaith coalition primarily around them, said Alito’s decision isn’t enough.

“I think Mahmoud versus Taylor is throwing us crumbs,” she said in an interview. “I mean, I’m grateful for it, but it needs to go much further than that.”

Lebsack, a special education teacher and former Orange County probation officer, claimed the California Department of Education is ripe to be sued under the First and 14th amendments for “compelling public school students to accept and affirm extremist ideologies of unlimited gender identities” and for “bringing extremist forced teachings into K-12 public education.”

Asked to respond to Lebsack’s assertion, a spokesperson for the state Education Department directed a reporter to guidance posted online about Alito’s decision. It states, in part, “The California Department of Education and California law continue to promote a safe, fair, and welcoming learning environment in all schools. It is important to note that Mahmoud does not invalidate or preempt California’s strong protections for LGBTQ+ youth from discrimination, harassment, and bullying.” 

The goal: Banning books?

Other conservatives said they see a path where Alito’s decision could lead to the removal of books and teaching they oppose by overwhelming schools with opt-outs to the point where the best option is to remove the materials.

“If there are so many people who want to opt out of this curriculum, maybe we should stop teaching it,” said Julie Hamill, an attorney and president of the California Justice Center. School leaders, she said, should be reflecting on whether they are “doing something wrong as a district and educational entity. Those are questions that are not being asked right now. It’s very obvious that’s what needs to happen.”

Sonja Shaw, a Chino Valley Unified School District board member running for state superintendent of public instruction in next year’s election, said she wants opt-outs to “overtax the system to where they just give up, and they stop teaching this stuff.”

If so many opt-outs were filed that books are removed from curricula, that would help, said Burt of the California Family Council, which has urged parents to flood districts with opt-outs. “We’re advocating for good books in school, and we think these are bad books, so we’re not going to be sad if we see them go.”

But an anti-censorship advocate said that would amount to book banning by a different name. 

“I’m not at all surprised that this is their plan of attack,” Tasslyn Magnusson, senior adviser to the Freedom to Read team at PEN America, an anti-censorship group, said of conservative activists. “These are books about families. These are books about how we experience the world, and they’re beautiful and well written,” she said. “Remember that it’s important for kids to have a variety of materials in front of them that resonate with their lives and their experiences.”

Another impact of the opt-outs will be how LGBTQ+ students and students from families with LGBTQ+ members will react when classmates leave and when teaching materials reflecting their lives are presented.

That could make “a child feel they’re not only different, but that they’re not accepted or that they should be ashamed of the family that they have,” said Jorge Reyes Salinas,  a spokesperson for Equality California, a civil rights group. Although the opt-outs promise to be disruptive, he said, they won’t end the state’s use of an inclusive curriculum. “We’re talking about a very small population of parents that are ignorant and full of hate.”

The presidents of California’s two largest teachers unions both said educators are not going to fold under pressure created by the high court’s decision.

“The role of the public school is to help students develop the critical thinking skills and knowledge necessary to engage in a pluralistic democracy,” said Jeff Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers. “We cannot have individuals dictating what is the good of the public. It’s also important that our public schools avoid over-compliance and refuse to capitulate to the weaponization of this decision.”

David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association, said that teachers “will obviously follow the law, but we want to make it clear to our members that there are other laws in California around kids’ ability to learn about their own identity, cultures, or all kinds of identities. We’re going to still honor kids’ ability to learn about their own identity and all kinds of identities.”

Goldberg also said it would be a mistake for school administrators to place the burden of opt-outs on teachers. “Teachers are overwhelmed already, just getting through the curriculum,” he said. Opt-outs are “a compliance thing that districts are going to need to figure out.”

The Scopes Monkey Trial

The country has a long history of science clashing with religion.

Driver, the Yale law professor, noted that in a 1987 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned a lower court that ruled fundamentalist Christians could remove their children from public school lessons that depicted women working outside the home, which they argued conflicted with their religious beliefs. 

Now, following Alito’s decision in the Maryland case, the losing argument in that case could be successful, Driver said. “It seems to me the Mahmoud versus Taylor decision empowered these sorts of objections to potentially carry the day.”

Alito’s decision also came 100 years after the landmark court case on the teaching of evolution in public schools — the epic clash of science versus religion known as the Scopes Monkey Trial that pitted legendary lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan against each other. 

Jennings, hired to prosecute a high school biology teacher, John Scopes, for teaching evolution against state law, won. But Tennessee’s Supreme Court later overturned Scopes’ conviction, ruling that a state law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools was unconstitutional.

But it didn’t end the debate over teaching science in the face of religious beliefs, said Pepperdine University law and history professor Edward Larson, author of . When it ended, “school districts all over the country and some states banned the teaching of the theory of human evolution,” he said.

Even when religious objections were later banned, “a series of state laws and local actions calling for balanced treatment of either teaching creation science, along with evolution, or later intelligent design” followed, Larson said. Several states, including Alabama, require disclaimers in biology books stating evolution “is just a theory,” he said.

“The issue of evolution in public schools remains a flash point,” Larson said.&�Բ�����;“It has been for a hundred years, it still is today.”

As the Alito decision plays out in the coming years, Larson said, “Schools may want to force people to provide all sorts of evidence” to prove their sincerely held religious beliefs.&�Բ�����;“But I’m thinking that most won’t feel it’s worth their time to get too engaged,” he added. 

“That’s just inviting trouble.” 

Parking permits. Desk space. Access cards.

, the U.S. Department of Education instead has spent weeks ostensibly working on the logistics. Meanwhile, the Trump administration wants the U.S. Supreme Court to decide they don’t have to restore those jobs after all.

The legal argument over the job status of Education Department workers is testing the extent to which President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon can reshape the federal bureaucracy without congressional approval.

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The employees, meanwhile, remain in limbo, getting paid for jobs they aren’t allowed to perform.

An analysis done by the union representing Education Department employees estimates the government is spending about $7 million a month for workers not to work. That figure does not include supervisors who are not part of the American Federation of Government Employee Local 252.

“It is terribly inefficient,” said Brittany Coleman, chief steward for AFGE Local 252 and an attorney in the Office for Civil Rights. “The American people are not getting what they need because we can’t do our jobs.”

in March, a week after she was confirmed by the Senate, and described them as a first step toward dismantling the Education Department. A few days later, directing McMahon to do everything in her legal authority to shut down the department.

The Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts, along with the American Federation of Teachers, other education groups, sued McMahon over the cuts. They argued the layoffs were so extensive that the Education Department would not be able to perform its duties under the law.

The , , and the particularly hard. These agencies are responsible for federally mandated work within the Education Department. By law, only Congress can get rid of the Education Department.

U.S. District Court Judge Myong Joun agreed, issuing a sweeping preliminary injunction in May that ordered the Education Department to bring laid off employees back to work and blocked any further effort to dismantle or substantively restructure the department.

The Trump administration sought a stay of that order, and the case is on the emergency docket of the Supreme Court, where a decision could come any day.

In the , Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the harms the various plaintiffs had described were largely hypothetical, that they had not shown the department wasn’t fulfilling its duties, and that they didn’t have standing to sue because layoffs primarily affect department employees, not states, school districts, and education organizations.

Sauer further argued that the injunction violates the separation of powers, putting the judicial branch in charge of employment decisions that are the purview of the executive branch.

“The injunction rests on the untenable assumption that every terminated employee is necessary to perform the Department of Education’s statutory functions,” Sauer wrote in a court filing. “That injunction effectively appoints the district court to a Cabinet role and bars the Executive Branch from terminating anyone.”

The Supreme Court, with a conservative 6-3 majority, has been friendlier to the administration’s arguments than lower court judges. Already the court has allowed to through the courts. And it has .

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week, Joun issued a telling the Education Department that it must reinstate employees in the Office for Civil Rights. The Victims Rights Law Center and other groups had described thousands of cases left in limbo, with children suffering severe bullying or unable to safely return to school.

Meanwhile, the Education Department continues to file weekly updates with Joun about the complexities of reinstating the laid-off employees. , Chief of Staff Rachel Oglesby said an “ad hoc committee of senior leadership” is meeting weekly to figure out where employees might park and where they should report to work.

Since the layoffs, the department has closed regional offices, consolidated offices in three Washington, D.C. buildings into one, reduced its contracts for parking space, and discontinued an interoffice shuttle.

In the , Oglesby said the department is working on a “reintegration plan.”

Coleman said she finds these updates “laughable.”

“If you are really willing to do what the court is telling you to do, then your working group would have figured out a way to get us our laptops,” she said.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Time and again, I have scoffed at such accusations, pointing out how public school choice policy is wildly different than private school choice policy. The two policies should never be conflated when discussing the merits of education reform policies with lawmakers, though many lazily place both in the same basket. It was easy for me to end that feckless argument by reminding lawmakers I was there to discuss public education reform policies only, dismissing any melding of public and private school choice policies. 

But with the U.S. Supreme Court taking up a in which the Oklahoma Supreme Court has already invalidated the approval of an application by the Catholic Church to open a religious based virtual charter school, I now find myself concerned we have crossed the Rubicon, forever merging public and private school policy while dismantling the foundational belief in the separation of church and state. A hearing is set for April 30.

The proposed charter school, which would be managed by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, proclaims in its application that it would carry out “the evangelizing mission of the [Catholic] Church” by fully embracing its religious teachings and incorporating those teachings “into every aspect of the School.” The school also acknowledged that it would discriminate in admissions, student discipline, and employment, as necessary to satisfy the Catholic Church’s religious doctrine, and that it would not accommodate a student’s disability if doing so would violate the school’s Catholic beliefs.

If one religious organization is allowed to operate a charter school under the umbrella of public funding, other groups will seek similar privileges, creating a patchwork of public schools, each with its own set of religious doctrines, prioritizing their religious mission over the educational needs of all students. 

The profound implications for the separation of church and state, public education, and the future of religious influence in the public sphere is in the balance. If the Court rules in favor of this school, it will not only shift the boundaries of constitutional law but also set a dangerous precedent that undermines the secular nature of our public education system.

Beyond the immediate risks of religious instruction and outright discrimination within a publicly funded space, the ramifications for the separation of church and state could be catastrophic. The Supreme Court has historically been tasked with interpreting the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which serves as a safeguard against government interference in religious practices and vice versa. By permitting religiously affiliated institutions to receive state funding, this decision could pave the way for religious schools—ranging from the aforementioned Catholic virtual school to the Church of Satan and every religious belief in between. 

This would lead to disastrous consequences where states increasingly entangle themselves with religion, creating a de facto state-sponsored religious system, serving as gatekeepers of what religions are worthy of overseeing public schools and the children who attend them.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court must consider not only the legal questions of the case but also the broader social and political context. Allowing a religiously affiliated charter school to operate within the public education system would set a precedent that we are likely to regret. It is crucial that the Court uphold this principle and prevent the Catholic Virtual Charter School in Oklahoma from becoming the gateway drug I was warned about—before it opens the door to a much more divided and religiously entrenched education system.

This is not a matter of denying the right to religious expression; it’s about ensuring that the public education system remains a neutral space for all students, regardless of their faith or belief. Let’s not forget: The preservation of the separation between church and state is vital to the integrity of our democracy.

Testing constitutional limits, Republicans in at least 15 states have introduced legislation this year that would require the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms.

GOP lawmakers are attempting to follow Louisiana, which last year became the first state in the country to have such a requirement in the modern era. That law is currently blocked in five public school districts as a lawsuit makes its way through the courts; other districts are expected to comply with the law.

The federal lawsuit argues that the law violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The case is likely heading to the U.S. Supreme Court. In December, 18 Republican state attorneys general supporting Louisiana’s law to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is currently hearing the case.

Republican state lawmakers also have introduced bills that would require prayer, Bible reading or chaplains in public schools.

The Ten Commandments are the basis of Judeo-Christian doctrine. In Jewish and Christian theology, God gave the commandments directly to the Prophet Moses, as described in the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament of the Bible.

Supportive state legislators say the commandments are a historical example of law and not purely religious in nature. But while there are commandments that prohibit murder and stealing, some declare that there are no other gods above God, and that people must observe the Sabbath.

So far this year, no state has enacted legislation requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in public schools. Measures in Mississippi and Oklahoma died in committee. In Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, they failed after passing out of one legislative chamber. Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs similar GOP-led legislation last year.

Although Republicans dominate the legislature in each of those states, the bills have been a hard sell for Christian lawmakers who say they also value the Constitution.

“So, if we put the Ten Commandments up, which are Christian commandments, then we’re actually violating the plain language of our Constitution in our First Amendment,” Montana state Sen. Jason Ellsworth, a Republican, earlier this month, as reported in the Daily Montanan.

Eight Republicans joined every Democrat in the Montana Senate to defeat the measure.

‘A new day for religious freedom’

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court that Kentucky’s law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools was unconstitutional.

However, 45 years later, supporters of these measures believe there’s a new legal pathway considering the makeup of the nation’s high court. The Supreme Court now has a 6-3 conservative majority, with three of its members appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term.

“It is now a new day for religious freedom in America,” Republican state Sen. Bob Phalen, who sponsored the Montana bill, during a committee hearing last month. “The Supreme Court’s approach on religious displays has evolved over time.”

Indeed, in 2022, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in favor of a Washington state public school football coach who prayed with his team on the 50-yard line. Images of Moses and the Ten Commandments also appear in many U.S. government buildings, including the Supreme Court and the Capitol.

Bills requiring the display of the Ten Commandments are just one example of Republican state lawmakers attempting to insert religious doctrine into the school day.

On Tuesday, the Republican majority in the Kentucky Senate passed that would require schools to have a moment of silence at the beginning of each day, lasting at least one minute. It now heads to the state House. School staff would be prohibited from telling students how to use the time, but critics — including the ACLU and some members of the state's Jewish community — say students to pray.

In Texas, Republican senators this session legislation that would allow school districts to require every campus "to provide students and employees with an opportunity to participate in a period of prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious text" each day. That bill is sitting in committee.

In Idaho, a bill that Bible readings in schools is also in committee.

In Oklahoma, the state’s top education official last year that the Bible would be incorporated into school curricula. The ACLU in October Oklahoma over the proposal. The suit is ongoing.

And in Nebraska, that would allow local public school boards to hire chaplains is sitting in committee.

The U.S. Supreme Court school-sponsored prayer and Bible readings in 1963.

How it looks in Louisiana

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill last month to public schools, colleges and universities for how to comply with the novel law, which took effect in the new year.

The guidance came with four example posters — one including images of Moses and Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who represents a Louisiana district.

Requirements include that the posters of the Ten Commandments must be at least 11 inches by 14 inches and must be donated to schools; there is no legal penalty for not displaying the canonical edict.

Murrill also advised that the posters be included next to other historical documents, such as the Declaration of Independence.

Murrill said the law was “plainly constitutional.” A federal district court judge disagreed last year when he blocked the law, which “unconstitutional on its face” and “overtly religious.” It seems likely the U.S. Supreme Court will decide which side prevails.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

OKLAHOMA CITY — A contract founding the nation’s first religious charter school is now void, but it could be reestablished if the U.S. Supreme Court were to rule in favor of the school. 

In its fourth time considering the measure, the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board finally agreed on Monday to rescind its contract with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, effectively blocking the school from opening as a state-funded entity. St. Isidore, named for the patron saint of the internet, had already agreed not to attempt to open nor accept public funding in the 2024-25 school year.

The on June 25 that the concept of a publicly funded, state-established school that endorses a religion is unlawful and unconstitutional. In doing so, the Court ordered the state board to invalidate St. Isidore’s founding charter contract. 

The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, which created the school, . Advocates for St. Isidore say denying the school of public funds because it is Catholic violates the right to religious freedom.

The board’s unanimous vote on Monday included a provision to reinstate the contract if the U.S. Supreme Court “reverses, vacates or otherwise nullifies” the state Supreme Court’s ruling. Father Stephen Hamilton, pastor of St. Monica Catholic Church in Edmond, prays before a meeting of the Statewide Charter School Board on Aug. 12 at the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)

The Statewide Charter School Board had declined multiple times to void the contract, . The board’s cooperation with Catholic officials was evident again on Monday when it had Father Stephen Hamilton, of St. Monica Catholic Church in Edmond, pray at the beginning of its meeting.

Chairperson Brian Shellem said the board was waiting for an appeals window to close and for further clarification from the Court on the ruling. He said last month that the board intended to follow the Court order but didn’t want to “short circuit” the legal process.

“Our board is always going to be in compliance with a court order,” Shellem said after Monday’s meeting. “Now, there’s those who wanted to rush the process, but there was a process and this board will always respect the process.”

Shellem said an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet been filed.

The odds are long that the nation’s highest court will take up the case. The U.S. Supreme Court a year to review cases, of which it agrees to hear about 100 to 150.

Meanwhile, pressure to rescind the contract mounted from Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who sued to strike down the school. Drummond asked the state Supreme Court to threaten a contempt citation against the board members if they again refused to follow the order in their meeting Monday. 

Anyone held in contempt of a court order could face a fine of up to $500 or imprisonment up to six months, or both, according to state law.

“While it is appalling that the board took so long to recognize the authority of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, I am pleased that board members finally fulfilled their duty,” Drummond said in a statement after the meeting. “The proposed state-sponsored religious charter school, funded by our tax dollars, represents a serious threat to the religious liberty of all four million Oklahomans.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

Milliken has been “one of the worst Supreme Court decisions” in the Washington Post, which decried its “awful legacy.” According to the , in the view of those who had fought for the end of segregation, it “killed any hope of integrating the public schools.” And, in 2014, the Harvard Graduate School of Education published a of essays calling the decision “dreadful” because it “betrayed the promise” of Brown v. Board of Ed, the historic ruling that outlawed racial segregation in the public schools.

Our organization, Available to All, fights educational redlining, and we often make the case that assigning children to schools based on where they live (using exclusionary maps) is morally wrong. 

District boundaries are one of our primary targets, as they often keep low-income kids trapped in failing schools, even while coveted public schools in nearby districts are allowed to turn those kids away. So you might think that we would join in the chorus denouncing the Milliken decision for these same reasons.

But that’s not quite right. In our view, Milliken was an unexpected but important decision by the Supreme Court. It was right on the law. Just as importantly, it put the brakes on a potentially disastrous social experiment. Hundreds of thousands of children, living in an area of over 800 square miles, would have been put on buses taking them far from their families and their homes every day. While many in the establishment supported bussing, it’s easy to see that the cost would have been born by the children, who would spend hundreds of hours on buses every year, robbing them of precious time with their family and friends. Those who designed the plan ignored this very real cost.

What’s more, such a plan likely would have had deleterious effects on public education in the Detroit area. A parent — of any race — would have been very eager to avoid such a fate for their children. You can imagine that many families would have moved to places like Utica, Trenton, and Northville, cities just out of reach of the social engineers. Others would have put their kids into private schools. 

Of course, the poorest of the poor would have been unable to afford either of these options, leaving them to bear the brunt of the reassignment plan.

That’s the key word in this whole saga: reassignment. Everyone involved in the case — and most commentators today — just assume that the government needs to assign children to public schools. Governor Milliken and his allies argued that kids should be assigned to schools based on race, while their opponents argued that kids should be assigned to schools based on their address.

Here is the huge moral problem with both of those positions: Whenever the government takes on the role of assigning children to specific public schools, then it also takes on the role of enforcing their exclusion from other public schools. This is why parents, in the 21^st century, can be put in jail for using someone else’s address to get their kids into a high-quality school. This is why school districts hire private eyes to and to conduct residency checks.

The answer to this conundrum is so simple: We need to move away from school assignments. Parents, not bureaucrats, should be allowed to ignore the arbitrary school district lines that divide our communities. 

Public schools should be required to be open to the public.

In practice, this means we need more and better Open Enrollment policies. In many states, public schools are not required to consider applications from students who live outside the district boundary. We have also argued that every public school should be required to reserve 15% of its seats for children who live outside of the attendance zone or the school district. But no child should be forced to attend a school outside his or her neighborhood.

The creators of the Detroit plan were right about one thing: Educational boundaries have indeed been used to separate Americans, and they have indeed contributed to the racial divisions in our schools. But the way to fix the problem is not to give bureaucrats the ability to ignore the school district lines as they determine the fate of hundreds of thousands of children.

It is American families who ought to be allowed to cross the lines.

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to Available to All and �鶹��Ʒ.

But some justices said the public deserves to know when the official is using their account as a private citizen.

“What makes these cases hard is that there are First Amendment interests all over the place,” said Justice Elena Kagan. 

In the lawsuit, , a California couple, said two Poway Unified School District board members violated their free speech rights when they blocked them on Facebook and Twitter, now X. Even if the accounts were personal, the parents argued, the members used them to discuss official school business.

“What you have is both of the petitioners using ‘we’ and ‘our’ when they talk about what the [school] board is doing,” said Pamela Karlan, who represents Christopher and Kimberly Garnier, parents of three children in the San Diego-area district. “Anybody who looks at that is going to think this is an official website. It looks like an official website. It performs all the functions of an official website.”

The board members insist that as private citizens, they had a right to restrict content. They objected to the Garniers repeatedly posting the same comments,and argued that the couple’s lengthy responses alleging racial discrimination and financial management were distracting and made it difficult for others to engage online. 

Their attorney compared the board members’ social media accounts to personal property.

“The state itself did not control or even facilitate their operation of the pages,” said Hashim Mooppan. He added that his clients, Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff, a current board member, and T.J. Zane, who left the board last year, “wielded no greater rights or privileges than any other private citizen denying access to their own property.” 

Despite concerned parents and community activists packing school board meetings in recent years, the majority of public comment on schools, and on government policy in general, takes place online. That’s why the court’s decision will have implications far beyond education. The court on Tuesday also heard a similar case from Michigan that essentially asks the same question: When does a public official’s social media activity amount to “state action?” The cases are among five the court will hear this term that on the role free speech plays in the digital sphere.

“I don’t think it’s immediately apparent which way they’ll go,” said Kristin Lindgren, deputy general counsel for the California School Boards Association, which submitted a brief in support of the board members. 

Lindgren, who listened to the three hours of oral arguments Tuesday, said the three liberal justices appeared more sympathetic to the public’s right to know if their representative is acting in an official capacity, while the conservative majority focused on the board members’ freedom to discuss district issues as private citizens. “I don’t think the court wants to remove a public official’s private First Amendment rights to speak off the cuff.”

Regardless of the court’s ultimate opinion, she said it’s clear that both board members and the public need guidance on the issue.

Appearance matters, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the said when it ruled in favor of the Garniers. The opinion said the board members, “clothed their pages in the authority of their offices,” and that First Amendment protections “apply no less” to the internet than they do “the bulletin boards or town halls of the corporeal world.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of the court’s conservatives, said it may come down to whether constituents can get their information elsewhere. 

“A lot of this will depend on whether it’s reposting or exclusive posting,” he said. “That’s the kind of practical information that people are going to need.”

The disclaimer issue

Justices devoted much of their time to the question of whether a public official must inform constituents when they’re speaking privately or in an official capacity.��

“Government officials can operate in their personal capacity and in their official capacity,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said, agreeing with Mooppan, the members’ attorney. But she added, “Why should they get to choose whether or not they’re doing one or the other without making a clear disclaimer? How do we know which you have chosen?”

Karlan noted that the Poway district even requires board members to “identify personal viewpoints as such and not as the viewpoint of the board.” But O’Connor-Ratcliff, she said, didn’t do that and predominantly used her Facebook page to communicate about school activities such as visiting classrooms during instructional time. “The only reason she has the power to do that is because of her official capacity.”

Mooppan countered that requiring officials to post such disclaimers is too heavy a burden and would have a chilling effect.

“Some of those people aren’t going to do it, and they’re gonna lose their First Amendment rights,” he said. “That’s the exact opposite of how the First Amendment normally works.”

The court’s opinion is likely to hinge on the extent of a public official’s authority, said Katie Fallow, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. For example, individual school board members don’t speak for the entire board.

But the second case, , focuses on a city manager, who has more power to act individually. In that case, the Sixth Circuit ruled that the public official was acting completely on his own.��

Fallow predicted the Supreme Court is unlikely to adopt the Sixth Circuit’s “very narrow” view.

“The court seemed to be indicating that it would use a test that considered whether a public official was using a private social media account to carry out the duties or exercise the authority of government,” she said. “The question is how broad and flexible that test will be.” 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Biden administration does not have the legal authority to enact a one-time student debt relief program, dealing a blow to the 40 million Americans who would have qualified.

Last year, the Biden Administration rolled out a debt forgiveness plan for borrowers with federal student loans that would be a one-time cancellation of up to $10,000.

Those student loan borrowers who had received Pell Grants — federal aid to help low-income students pay for higher education — could qualify for an additional $10,000 in forgiveness, a policy that was 

������, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the conservative majority of the court, deemed that , the Higher Education Loan Authority, known as MOHELA, would have its revenue threatened by the debt relief.

The case was filed by Republican attorneys general of Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and South Carolina, along with Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds’ general counsel, and they argued the Biden administration overstepped its reach and that MOHELA would be harmed by a loss of profits from federal student loan debt relief.

The court majority agreed. “(T)he Secretary’s plan would cost MOHELA, a nonprofit government corporation created by Missouri to participate in the student loan market, an estimated $44 million a year in fees,” Roberts wrote.

“MOHELA is, by law and function, an instrumentality of Missouri: Labeled an ‘instrumentality’ by the State, it was created by the State, is supervised by the State, and serves a public function. The harm to MOHELA in the performance of its public function is necessarily a direct injury to Missouri itself.”

President Joe Biden said in a statement that “the fight is not over” to help borrowers.

“I believe that the Court’s decision to strike down our student debt relief plan is wrong,” Biden said in a statement, adding that his administration plans to announce more efforts to help borrowers.

“I will stop at nothing to find other ways to deliver relief to hard-working middle-class families,” he said. “My Administration will continue to work to bring the promise of higher education to every American.”

Republicans celebrated the decision. Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey held a Friday news conference.

Bailey said the case was about “protecting working Missouri families from getting saddled with Ivy League debt,” and about “basic fairness.”

“I paid for my college with blood, sweat and tears, and service to my country, and it’s only fair that working families not be stuck with other people’s debt,” Bailey said.

All three liberal Justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. Kagan, writing for the dissenters, did not agree with the finding the states had standing.

“The plaintiffs here are six States: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina,” Kagan wrote. “They oppose the Secretary’s loan cancellation plan on varied policy and legal grounds. But as everyone agrees, those objections are just general grievances; they do not show the particularized injury needed to bring suit.”

The justices  that a second case challenging the debt relief plan did not have legal standing. That case was brought by a two people with student loan debt who would either partially or entirely not qualify for the White House program. The case was backed by the conservative advocacy group the Job Creators Network Foundation.

Turbulent history for student debt relief 

The Biden administration’s student debt relief plan has not only been challenged in the courts by Republicans, but also in Congress. The House and the Senate  through the Congressional Review Act, but Biden vetoed the resolution.

More than 16 million borrowers had already been approved for relief,   before  from accepting more applicants following a nationwide injunction.

Repayments on federal student loans are set to resume Oct. 1, but interest accrual will begin starting Sept. 1, 

The Department of Education did not respond to a States Newsroom request for comment, but said on its website that the agency is “reviewing the Court’s decision to determine next steps.”

​�ċAmericans have student loan debt, and the Federal Reserve  that the total U.S. student loan debt is more than $1.76 trillion.

A law passed in early June to address the nation’s debt ceiling  that the White House would not be able to extend the pause on repayment for federal student loans unless approved by Congress.

For three years, there has been a pause on federal student loan repayment due to the coronavirus pandemic that was initially put in place by the Trump administration and extended by the Biden administration.

In a statement, Iowa’s Reynolds said the decision “affirms what Iowans have believed this entire time: the hard-working men and women of this country should not bear the burden of paying off others’ loans.”

“This plan belittles Iowans who paid their own debt or chose not to pursue a traditional four-year degree,” she said.

HEROES Act central to ruling

Roberts disagreed with the Biden administration’s argument that the federal HEROES Act allowed the secretary of education “to cancel $430 billion of student loan principal.” The HEROES Act, first enacted 20 years ago, was used by the Trump administration to suspend repayments on federal student loans at the onset of the pandemic.

, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar — representing the Biden administration — argued that under the HEROES Act, the secretary of education can “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” to help borrowers in a national emergency, such as the coronavirus pandemic.

Roberts said the administration went too far. “We hold today that the Act allows the Secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up,” Roberts wrote.

Roberts invoked the “major questions doctrine,” which means that if Congress wants to give an agency, such as the Department of Education, the power to make a decision of  “economic and political significance,” it has to explicitly say so.

Roberts wrote that “the question here is not whether something should be done; it is who has the authority to do it.”

Congress reacts

Congress is unlikely to act on debt relief anytime soon, with control split between a Republican House and a Democratic Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a statement that he was disappointed in the decision.

“This disappointing and cruel ruling shows the callousness of the MAGA Republican-controlled Supreme Court,” he said. “The hypocrisy is clear: as justices accept lavish, six-figure gifts, they don’t dare to help Americans saddled with student loan debt, instead siding with the powerful, big-monied interests.”

He called on the Biden administration to “do everything in its power to deliver for millions of working- and middle-class Americans struggling with student loan debt.”

Congressional Republicans hailed the decision.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement that the court’s decision “deals a heavy blow to Democrats’ distorted and outsized view of executive power.”

“The President of the United States cannot hijack twenty-year-old emergency powers to pad the pockets of his high-earning base and make suckers out of working families who choose not to take on student debt,” McConnell said.

GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who introduced the Congressional Review Act resolution to overturn the Biden administration’s debt relief policy, said in a statement that the court came to the right conclusion.

“This is an obvious but welcomed ruling,” he said. “President Biden’s student loan scheme does not ‘forgive’ debt, but unfairly transfers the burden from those who willingly took out loans onto those who chose not to attend college or already fulfilled their commitment to pay off their loans.”

But Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia said in a statement that the news was devastating.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to usurp the President’s executive authority to provide meaningful debt relief isn’t just bad for the everyday, hardworking Georgians who are being held back financially by crippling debt, but it’s also terrible for our entire economy and sets a dangerous precedent that binds the hands of the elected executive from taking action that reflects the will of the people,” he said.

The chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, said in a statement that she was pleased the Supreme Court had held the Biden administration accountable.

“Mr. President, good riddance to your illegal, economically disastrous taxpayer-funded bailout for the wealthy,” she said. ““This ‘one-time’ ‘cancellation’ of student loan debt was subterfuge for the radical Left’s ultimate goal of taxpayer-funded ‘free’ college for all.”

Foxx has held several hearings about the Biden administration’s student debt relief program, and has spoken against the policy since it was announced.

The top Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, Bobby Scott of Virginia, said in a statement that millions of borrowers will be denied “the relief they need to make ends meet.”

“A college education should not depend on how much money a student’s parents make,” he said.

Scott said moving forward, Democrats should work to advance legislation to increase the funding of Pell Grants, lower interest rates for student loans and “make other critical reforms to make our student loan system work for students.”

Rep. Frederica S. Wilson of Florida, who is the top Democrat on the Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee, said in a statement that the decision will perpetuate inequality and continue to harm vulnerable borrowers of color.

“It is no secret that the pandemic has disproportionately impacted communities of color, exacerbating inequalities,” she said. “Student debt cancellation would have been a bold step toward narrowing the racial wealth gap.”

Youth vote

The decision is likely to become an issue in the race for the presidency. Youth organizations that back student debt relief said they will use the ruling to rally support.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, one of the largest youth voting organizations, said in a statement that “young voters will remember this come 2024.”

She added that, “heading into 2024, we will not forget the people who fight for us everyday and the people who would rather protect the pockets of shady billionaires.”

Another Gen Z-led organization, Voters of Tomorrow, echoed similar sentiments.

“We hope that the Biden Administration is able to negotiate a deal through Congress or take executive action to relieve student debt for all Americans,” the group said in a statement. “While we know it will be difficult with far-right politicians who have championed the removal of the plan, it is what is needed to remove the burden from millions of Americans.”

Kendra Cotton, the CEO of New Georgia Project, a voter mobilization group, said in a statement that in “the wake of this decision, New Georgia Project will double down on our efforts to connect the issues Black, brown, and young Georgians need to secure their economic futures — an increased minimum wage, better access to healthcare, and more affordable housing — to the importance of voting.”

GOP presidential candidates, such as Nikki Haley, praised the decision as stopping executive overreach from the White House.

“A president cannot just wave his hand and eliminate loans for students he favors, while leaving out all those who worked hard to pay back their loans or made other career choices,” she said.

“The Supreme Court was right to throw out Joe Biden’s power grab.”

Another presidential candidate, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, released a video statement, arguing that there are other pathways to the “American Dream” that don’t require a college degree.

“We need more welders, carpenters and electricians,” he said. “These are the jobs that built America, and these are the jobs liberal elites can’t ship to China.”

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that two prominent universities’ consideration of race in acceptances violated the U.S. Constitution, effectively reshaping the role of affirmative action in the college admissions process throughout higher education.

, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, wrote that the admissions processes at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

“Because Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause,” Roberts wrote.

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“Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice,” Roberts continued.

Because Harvard is a private institution and UNC is a public institution, this decision affects higher education across the board.

The three liberal Justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Jackson recused herself from the Harvard portion of the decision.

Jackson participated in the debate of the UNC case but not the Harvard case because she is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and recently sat on the Harvard Board of Overseers, which is one of the two governing boards for Harvard University.

The decision stems from a 2014 lawsuit against Harvard College and a separate lawsuit against the University of North Carolina. The two suits sought to overturn Grutter v. Bollinger, which is currently how universities use race-conscious admissions.

Harvard and UNC have argued that race is one of the many factors that the universities consider in admissions, along with socioeconomic status and extracurricular activities, and they make admission decisions within the guidelines set by Grutter.

Both suits were filed by a group called Students for Fair Admissions, which is funded by Edward Blum, a conservative legal activist who has launched multiple lawsuits over what he sees as racial preferences in school admissions.

For the Harvard case, the group alleges that Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because Asian American applicants are less likely to be admitted compared to similarly qualified Black, Latino or Indigenous applicants. Title VI bars institutions that receive federal funding from discrimination on the basis of race.

The UNC case argues that because the university takes into consideration race in its admissions process, it violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Federal courts rejected Students for Fair Admissions’ arguments and sided with the universities.

Affirmative action  from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, when President Lyndon B. Johnson issued an executive order barring discrimination in the workplace based on race, religion — and later gender — by those entities that received federal contracts and subcontracts.

There are nine states that have banned race-based affirmative action from being implemented in public institutions: Florida, California, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Idaho. Washington state rescinded its ban on affirmative action in 2022.

Oral arguments

, members of the court’s conservative wing, who now make up a 6-3 majority, questioned if it is legal for universities to consider race and for how long such policies should endure, pointing to a 2003 case that predicted that affirmative action would no longer be needed in 25 years.

The case, Grutter vs. Bollinger, allowed the limited use of race to be considered in college admissions, and held that race was merely one of many considerations given in an applicant. The case allowed the University of Michigan Law School to consider race in its admissions process in order to help create a diverse student body.

Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative and the only Black man on the Supreme Court, pressed lawyers defending the schools’ policies on how diversity benefited education.

“I didn’t go to racially diverse schools but there were educational benefits. And I’d like you to tell me expressly when a parent sends a kid to college that they don’t necessarily send them there to have fun or feel good or anything like that. They send them there to learn physics or chemistry or whatever they’re studying,” Thomas said to Ryan Park, the attorney representing UNC. “So tell me what the educational benefits are to that?”

During oral arguments in October of last year, 

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And while a few charter and school choice leaders are quietly supporting the proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, seeing it as a watershed moment for religious freedom, others are saying, in so many words: Be careful not to drown.

While public funding would bring unprecedented growth and financial stability to such programs, it could also create a fraught path to the religious freedom they’re seeking, as the burden of complying with court orders and myriad regulations, which even autonomous charters face, could be overwhelming. 

The school and others like it will almost certainly be tied up in litigation for months or years, said Greg Richmond, of the Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools. And that’ll be bad, since it will take precious autonomy away from what should be independent schools’ sole decision-making power.

Richmond said he looked the other day at the website and counted more than 150 regulations, including meeting agenda formats, residency requirements, Open Records Acts rules and more. 

“It’s odd to try to fit a religious school into that regulated charter framework,” he said. “The accountability that comes with charter schools, I think, would be a shock to many Catholic schools in terms of the quantity of measures — academically, financially, operationally.”

That said, what happens when a Catholic charter school teacher, for instance, takes to Facebook to advocate for abortion rights? Are the teacher’s free speech rights protected, as in a public school? Or can the charter school dismiss her because she’s advocating against the teachings of the church?

For their part, charter proponents fear that while the new school may be a good political fit in deep-red Oklahoma, the legal precedent it sets could both damage and perhaps even decimate the larger charter sector in coming years. “It will give opponents of charter schools yet another reason to claim charter schools are not public schools,” said Richmond, who formerly led the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. “So that does represent a threat to charter schools.”

Aside from betraying charter schools’ implicit vow to welcome and educate all students, they say it could further erode charters’ , especially in blue states. They’ve vowed to fight what could soon be one of their own.

In the most recent development, Oklahoma’s virtual charter school board last month turned down an application from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City to open the new virtual school, a move that proponents say was largely pro forma. 

But Nina Rees, president and chief executive officer of the , said the board’s hesitation likely stemmed from “the strong probability of breaking state law if the school is approved. Should a charter school be authorized that falls outside the scope of the law, it will certainly be challenged in court, and we will be on the side of those seeking to uphold the law and affirm the public, non-sectarian nature of charter schools.”

Public or private actors?

While the Oklahoma case plays out, both sides say the coming weeks could also set in motion one of the most consequential federal court decisions ever about the future of charter schools: The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide whether to take up a that could wreak havoc with the bedrock idea that charter schools are public schools, as they’ve maintained since the first one opened more than 30 years ago.

The case, , pits three female students against their “traditional values” school, which has required that they wear skirts. In doing so, they say, the school violated their civil rights — its founder has called female students “fragile vessels” and believes the dress code will preserve chivalry, ensuring that girls are treated “courteously and more gently than boys.”

In court filings, the school argued that even though it enjoys public funding, it is a private entity and not a “state actor,” like district schools. So the Constitution’s 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to it, the school maintained. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond last year rejected that argument, setting up a possible hearing in Washington, D.C., before a high court that has already struck down states’ so-called Blaine amendments, allowing public funds to flow to religious schools in small communities without sufficient school capacity.

“It’s not a new conversation,” said Rees. “What’s new about it is that we have a more conservative Supreme Court.”

For Rees, who served as a top official in George W. Bush’s Education Department, the truth of the matter seems clear: “As public schools, we can’t teach religion.”

They also must open their doors to anyone, both students and staff, she said. That could potentially bump up against schools that, as private operations, can openly reject candidates that don’t uphold their beliefs.

Rees and others say the path forward for funding these schools would more appropriately — and legally — be found in another recent development taking place in statehouses nationwide: taxpayer-funded education savings accounts, or ESAs, vouchers and tax credits, which in a few states offer as much money to families for private schooling as charter schools get per pupil.

“In some respects, if you wanted to promote religious education,” Rees said, “the ESA route will get you to that end goal faster, without rules and regulations that come if you open a religious charter school.”

In January, the charter school network Great Hearts, which operates classical education schools in four states and online, said it was doing just that: It announced it was opening a pair of Christian academies in the Phoenix area. But the schools, the network said, would be , funded by the state’s ESA program.��

Jay Heiler, Great Hearts’ CEO, said Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts are worth about $7,000 per student, not quite enough to fund a successful private school, but enough “when supplemented with some philanthropic effort, which we’re out there pushing to try to make ends meet, partner-to-partner, with churches that have some existing classroom infrastructure.”

But Brett Farley, executive director of the , which represents the church on public policy issues, said that in most states, ESAs don’t typically provide anything near full per-pupil funding, leaving students a dearth of options, especially in rural areas.

While Rees’ group has vowed to oppose schools like St. Isidore and efforts to reframe charters as private actors, others aren’t so sure. 

Heiler said Great Hearts, which has operated charter schools for more than 20 years, “will continue to follow that pathway,” keeping its religious schools private. But it also in the North Carolina case, arguing that the Supreme Court should decide that charter schools “are not presumptive state actors.” Failure to do so, it said, “will wreak havoc” on education systems more broadly and innovative charters specifically.��

Held up in court ‘for a long time’

Farley said the Oklahoma virtual charter board’s rejection last month was largely routine, giving the archdiocese 30 days to revise aspects of the plan that include how they’ll provide rural broadband statewide and special education services to disabled students. He said the board also wanted to know more about how the archdiocese will address the question of whether a religious public school violates state statute.

“We’re confident we’ll be able to answer all three of those questions sufficiently, and then we’ll move on to a vote,” he said. He anticipated that approval would take place in June. 

But in interviews, he whether the new virtual school would admit LGBTQ students or hire such staff members, saying it would follow state regulations while maintaining its right to operate according to religious beliefs. Asked if gay, lesbian or transgender educators are invited to apply for employment at the school, Farley declined to comment. Like other public schools, charters are prohibited from discriminating based on religious belief, gender identity or similar factors.

He has said he believes that charter schools are non-state actors — Oklahoma’s charter framework, he said, is “very loose.”

M. Karega Rausch, president and CEO of the charter authorizers’ group, said even Oklahoma law is clear: It’s unlawful for a public school, including a charter school, to provide a sectarian education.

Whatever happens with the Oklahoma board, Rausch said, the case will be tied up in litigation “for a long time.”

If the Oklahoma board ultimately rejects the St. Isidore application, the archdiocese can appeal the decision to the state board of education.

Gov. Kevin Stitt has for the effort, but new Attorney General Gentner Drummond has slightly complicated the process: In February, he withdrew an opinion from his predecessor that said the state board would be on solid legal ground if it approved a religious charter school.��

His said state law is “currently unsettled” as to whether charter schools are so-called “state actors” or private school operators. Like many in the sector, he’s awaiting the decision in the North Carolina case.

‘Proceed with caution’

Kathleen Porter-Magee, superintendent of , a network of 11 independent Catholic elementary schools in New York City and Cleveland, said high-performing private schools like hers would love the extra per-pupil allotment that comes with being a charter school: It costs her about $11,500 per student to keep the doors open, yet her students bring in just $800 apiece from New York state in the form of reimbursements for such as required assessments, immunizations and attendance reports.��

Were Partnership’s New York schools to become charters, they’d stand to bring in more than $16,000 per pupil, which the city’s charter schools typically receive, and about half of what they’d get if they were district schools. “We wouldn’t know what to do with that much money,” she said. “It would be just absolutely game-changing for us.”

But it would also complicate matters. “How much freedom do those religious organizations have to live out their faith every day if they are technically running public charter schools?” she asked.

Like many in the school choice world, she’s closely watching what happens in Oklahoma. She’s “deeply conflicted” about the case: Denying public funding to non-profits because of their religious status “feels wrong,” she said, so she supports the archdiocese’s application for charter status.

“From a constitutional standpoint, I think it is the right decision. I think it makes sense. But I just think it’s like, ‘Proceed with caution.’ ”

Public charter schools may have lost some of the luster they enjoyed with centrist Democrats in Washington, D.C., a decade or two ago, but a top Biden administration education official this week sought to reassure the sector that it enjoys broad support on both sides of the aisle.

“I do not believe that the bottom has fallen out from under the bipartisan coalition for public charter schools,” said Roberto Rodriguez, assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development at the U.S. Department of Education. “I think if that were the case, you would see the funding completely deteriorating from this program. And in fact, you’re not seeing that.”

The Biden administration has faced harsh criticism for its stance on its $440 million , a key federal grant that more than half of charter schools rely upon. This comes as centrist Democrats, once the sector’s biggest backers, have sought political support from teachers’ unions, which for decades have forcefully opposed charters.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, then-candidate Joe Biden admitted, “I’m not a charter school fan.”

But on Wednesday during a panel discussion at Washington, D.C.’s Brookings Institution, Rodriguez adopted a softer posture.

“We support high-quality public schools for all kids, including high-quality public charter schools,” he told Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Doug Harris, the panel’s moderator. “Our budget stands behind that. The work we’re doing stands behind that. The rulemaking that we’ve proposed is not an effort to tear down the charter school sector. In fact, it is an effort to further promote that objective.”

But the administration has warned that more than one in seven charter schools funded by the grant either never opened or shut down before their grant period ended, in effect wasting an in taxpayer funding. In response, last year it proposed new regulations that critics said amounted to a new “war” on charter schools.

The originally proposed rule for applicants required them to prove their schools met “unmet demand” in existing public schools — a requirement that charter advocates said ignored a bigger problem in district schools: poor quality.

The department also said applicants had to collaborate with “at least one traditional public school or traditional school district,” in effect giving districts a veto over their plans, according to charter advocates.

A third requirement said charter schools had to show they wouldn’t worsen district desegregation efforts or increase racial or socio-economic segregation or isolation in schools.

Taken together, , the draft requirements were “tailor-made to ensure that the most successful charter schools won’t be replicated or expanded.”

The education department received 26,550 comments on the proposed regulations, andangry charter school parents the White House in May to protest Biden’s stance on funding regulations.

eventually admitted that the final rules, issued in August, were less harmful but “not without impact” on future growth of the sector. Among the concerns: a shortened window for submitting applications.

Two groups , saying, among other things, that the department lacked authority to impose new criteria on the grants, which Congress approved as part of a massive spending bill in December. It level-funded the charter grant for the . 

Harris, who has long studied the sector, noted that recent campaign rhetoric “has been different from what the actions have been in the administration,” with more public-facing skepticism from lawmakers about charters than “what’s happening in the nuts and bolts of committee rooms.” He asked the panel if they see the coalition for charters “fracturing” on the ground, especially among centrist Democrats.

Shavar Jeffries, CEO of the KIPP Foundation, which trains educators for the network’s 280 schools, observed that even in the movement’s “halcyon heydays,” charters were simultaneously “contentious among a variety of different constituencies” and the beneficiaries of significant bipartisan support. That continues today, he said.

“I do think there’s a kind of false idea [that] people are moving away from the issue in ways that [are] maybe inconsistent with what we’ve seen in the past,” he said.

But Jeffries said opponents of the Biden regulations had a point about not wanting to collaborate with districts, since some district officials are “not interested in the practices we’re trying to share.” He added, “You can take a horse to water, but you can’t take it much further than that [if] people aren’t interested.”

In a few instances, Jeffries said, opponents “are actually acting aggressively to undermine the capacity for public charter schools to exist.” He recalled local superintendents who were not only opposed to KIPP practices, but “sadly, in some instances…didn’t even want us to be here. So the idea that we’re going to obtain their support is obviously not going to happen.”

He also said the requirement that charter schools not worsen segregation can, in some cases, amount to a requirement that schools serving Black and Latino students essentially find white students in the suburbs.

Charter schools serve more than 3 million students, recent research shows, about two-thirds of them Black or Hispanic and most low-income. 

The Brookings panel also included from another panelist, Katrina Bulkley of Montclair State University, who led a team that found charter school authorizers are a key but little-studied aspect of the charter school world.

While some authorizers say equity is key to their mission, they found, others focus on choice or “market logic.” And they found that authorizers that prioritized equity received applications from schools that also prioritized equity. “This really suggests to us that those beliefs and the practices of authorizers are shaping what applicants are submitting,” Bulkley said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story contained an incorrect funding amount for the federal Charter Schools Program.

Carson was a bit odd. First, it concerned town-tuitioning, through which families in districts not sufficiently large to maintain schools at all levels can attend private institutions using public funds. Such programs only exist in three states: Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. The case also dealt with, basically, a loose end from previous cases that had reached the Supreme Court: Is choice of a religious school protected based on a school’s “status” — it identifies as religious — but not its “use” — it acts on that religion?

Town-tuitioning is different from most choice vehicles, such as vouchers, which allow funds to follow students regardless of whether a district school is available. Maine argued that tuitioning makes private schools essentially stand-ins for public schools, but that was not central to the decision. No matter what the intention, Chief Justice Roberts stated the simple core principle in the , “The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion.” 

Far from a tectonic shift, the ruling was consistent with precedent going back to in 2002, in which the Court ruled that public funding reaching a religious school was not a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause as long it got there via families’ free choices. Carson also built on (2017), in which the Court ruled that an institution could not be excluded from a “generally available” state benefit just because it was religious, and (2020), which said a state could not exclude schools from choice programs simply because they were religious.

Viewed against the backdrop of these other cases, Carson essentially cemented the precedent that religious schools cannot be singled out for exclusion from private choice programs, including by rendering religion meaningless with a “use” prohibition. 

But this leaves much still to be resolved. 

The first reaction from Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey after the ruling was to declare that the schools Carson petitioners wanted to attend discriminated against other religions and LGBTQ families. “They promote a single religion to the exclusion of all others, refuse to admit gay and transgender children, and openly discriminate in hiring teachers and staff,” . Frey said that going forward he would “ensure that public money is not used to promote discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry.” 

This is almost certainly the next major frontier in choice litigation: What restrictions can governments put on religious schools?

We’ve seen something of a in Maryland, where the state removed the Bethel Christian School from its BOOST voucher program because the school’s handbook said Bethel believes marriage is between a man and a woman and gender is assigned by God at birth. It also said, “Faculty, staff and students are required to identify with, dress in accordance with, and use the facilities associated with their biological gender.” The state said the policies were discriminatory and, hence, Bethel was ineligible for BOOST. 

The school sued for religious discrimination. It lost in a lower court in 2020, but in 2021 a U.S. district court sided with Bethel. The ruling, however, dodged whether the state had to allow Bethel to follow its beliefs. Judge Stephanie Gallagher held that there was no evidence that the school had ever acted on them, so Bethel was being punished unconstitutionally for the speech in its handbook, not its religion. 

Another possible arena for legal action: Religious charter schools. Charters are public schools but are run by private groups. Carson, and Espinoza before it, may have opened the legal door for groups to sue for the right to establish religious charters. If religion cannot be a reason to exclude schools from choice programs, that arguably includes charters.  

This is a viable theory, but there does not seem to be a major groundswell to act on it, with the idea mainly for . Meanwhile, Nina Rees, president of National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, has against it, saying flatly, “Charter schools, as public schools, can never be religious institutions.” 

Ending school choice programs may also be a target for those who oppose choice in general, or religious options in particular. If choice cannot exclude religious schools, then the only option is to terminate the programs.

That, however, might well be mooted by a broader legal campaign to extend the rationale for religious inclusion in choice programs to all K-12 education: If government taxes everyone to pay for secular public schools, it must allow religious families to take their allocation to religious institutions. Without religious options, public schooling itself violates religious free exercise. 

This is not a new conclusion, but was anticipated by Justice Stephen Breyer in his Espinoza dissent: “If making scholarships available to only secular nonpublic schools exerts ‘coercive’ pressure on parents whose faith impels them to enroll their children in religious schools, then how is a State’s decision to fund only secular public schools any less coercive?” 

The logical answer is that it is not — it, too, elevates the secular over the religious.

Were the Supreme Court to agree with that, unlike the incremental change in Carson, it would, indeed, be Earth shaking. 

Neal McCluskey is the director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.

Along with her peer Reese Wiley, Laufgraben decided to launch a new group, IU Students for Reproductive Rights. In Indiana, Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb on Friday announced an emergency legislative session in early July, likely to enact a . 

With that backdrop, IU Students for Reproductive Rights will support people on campus with uteruses, run voter registration drives and share information about ways to take action, such as a Monday in Bloomington, said Laufgraben.

On Saturday, the leaders created an for the new group. Just a few days since its founding, the account already has hundreds of followers. More than 80 students have reached out asking how they can get involved. 

“We were not expecting so many people to be coming to us, saying, ‘I’m passionate, I want to help,’” Laufgraben told �鶹��Ʒ.

The co-founders created a group chat for their new student members. A cascade of messages quickly began pouring in:

“Hey guys,” one student wrote, “I just wanted to say to anyone on here, if you need support or love during this time, don’t hesitate to reach out.”

“I’m so grateful for the support because this is such an important issue that needs action immediately,” added another.

The camaraderie and uplift after a Friday ruling that left her and others “heartbroken,” said Laufgraben, has been encouraging.

“It has been sparking so many conversations and it’s honestly really beautiful because people are finding support within this group,” she said.

The response among Indiana University students is one of many examples of youth across the country rallying for reproductive rights in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Organization decision.

“Young people who have not been previously involved in the abortion movement are feeling called to act,” Tamara Marzouk told �鶹��Ʒ. 

Marzouk works with hundreds of youth advocates for reproductive rights as director of abortion access at the nonprofit . In the days since the Friday ruling, she’s seen a new wave of young people become galvanized over abortion access. 

In the 24 hours after the Supreme Court announced it was overturning Roe, more than 150 young people across the country — in states where abortion remains legal as well as where it is now banned — signed up to join the and work for reproductive rights in their communities, she said.

Since a leaked majority SCOTUS opinion came out in early May, youth advocates have been preparing for the possible overturn of Roe, including similar to what Laufgraben and her peers will pursue.

“We still need to be fighting for abortion policy, but in the meantime, young people are really taking care of one another,” said Marzouk.

, a Gen Z-led organization working to help youth nationwide get involved in politics, issued a statement promising mobilization at the polls in response to the ruling.

“[Friday’s] decision makes clear that the Supreme Court does not represent Gen Z or the future we imagine for our country,” the organization wrote. “We must elect representatives who will protect us when the courts have failed. Our generation will not stop fighting for reproductive rights — for human rights.”

Abortions are now illegal or heavily restricted in , and 12 other states have laws in place that could pave the way for similar bans. Still more, including Indiana, are expected to soon enact new laws outlawing the procedures.

In the past, Indiana University students seeking to terminate a pregnancy have been able to receive treatment at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bloomington, Indiana, said Laufgraben. But if the legislature criminalizes the procedures, young people would soon have to trek out of state to receive care — an option that will be difficult for students who don’t have access to transportation or can’t get permission to skip their classes and on-campus jobs.

In Arkansas, a near-total abortion ban is already in effect with . Ali Taylor, president and co-founder of the Arkansas Abortion Support Network, said the law will have a disproportionate impact on young people.

“It’s difficult for minors to travel,” she told �鶹��Ʒ. “Most minors will probably [now] have great difficulty in accessing abortion.”

Taylor’s organization is based in Little Rock and the closest clinic now available is in Granite City, Illinois, a five hour drive away.

The fall of Roe “most adversely affects communities that are already marginalized,” Marzouk emphasized. “There are some people who might be able to travel across state lines. That may not be a burden as much for some people as it is for others.”

Laufgraben, for her part, is still absorbing the possible implications on her Indiana campus. But she’s determined to continue to push for change.

“Right now is really scary,” said the young organizer. But “the fight isn’t over.”

“This Supreme Court does not represent Gen Z or the future we imagine for our country,” , the youth-led organization behind the protest, wrote in a press release signed by several other youth-powered groups including and the . 

“Young people are appalled and horrified by the leaked Supreme Court decision to strip all people who can become pregnant of their basic right to choose.”

Hundreds of youth activists rallied outside the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday evening denouncing the leaked majority opinion set to overturn the landmark 1973 decision, which guarantees federal constitutional protection of abortion rights. More protests are planned in cities across the country in the coming weeks, organizers said.

Eve Levenson, who emceed the Thursday event and is a senior at George Washington University, said the rally was meant to send a message to elected officials.

“It was really about making it clear to those in power … how much Generation Z cares about this issue,” she told �鶹��Ʒ.

Generation Z includes individuals roughly born between 1997 to 2012, or those currently ages 10 to 25. A majority of abortion patients nationwide are , and 37% are 24 or younger.

Organizers estimate that there may have been nearly 1,000 young protesters outside the Supreme Court, Levenson said, some who traveled from as far as New York state. Another 40,000 viewers watched the stream on Twitter and 80,000 watched on TikTok. Many youth who could not make the trek to the nation’s capital are now planning their own local demonstrations, she said.

The rally was “100% Gen Z led,” Levenson explained, including many high school-age organizers. On the evening of May 2, when the leaked draft majority opinion published by revealed that the Supreme Court appears poised to reverse Roe, her group chat of youth organizers exploded, she said. Someone suggested the idea of a rally in front of the Supreme Court and “it kind of just came together really quickly from there,” said the college senior.

“We all felt so galvanized,” added Levenson. “[Young people] are for bodily autonomy, we are for access to abortion, we are for reproductive health care and people are really pissed off to see those things taken away.”

Speaker Soraya Bata, a student at Georgetown University, pointed out that over a dozen states have trigger laws set to immediately ban abortions should Roe fall. Her home state of Florida in April passed a law banning the medical procedures just 15 weeks into pregnancy, replacing a previous rule that allowed abortions within the first 24 weeks. States including Oklahoma and Texas have recently passed similar restrictions.

“Some people won’t even know that they are pregnant at that stage,” said the young leader. “These laws mean that the only people who will have access to abortions are wealthy Americans who can afford to travel out of state.”

Nearly half, 49%, of those who had abortions in 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, were . Another 26% made less than twice the level, meaning 3 in 4 people seeking abortions had little, if any, disposable income.

Addressing the crowd Thursday, Sofia Ongele, a youth activist with , took aim at the underlying logic put forward in the leaked Supreme Court draft.

“Justice Alito’s core argument is that abortion is ‘not deeply rooted in this nation’s history and traditions,’” she said. “Our nation’s history is marked by genocide, slavery [and] classism. … We owe it to our ancestors to fight for a better world than they had.”

Contraception, the young speaker explained, saved her life. In 2018, she received an emergency blood transfusion after her periods caused extreme anemia. Since then, she has used hormonal birth control to regulate her cycle.

“To stay alive, I had to have complete control over my body,” said Ongele. “Should anyone infringe on those rights, my health and safety would immediately be threatened.”

Though many of the organizations behind the rally self-identify as nonpartisan, several speakers implied there would be political ramifications for officials who oppose policy measures to protect reproductive rights, along with other issues such as addressing climate change, LBGTQ rights and health equity. The young protesters were by Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, who ​�ċis running for re-election in a Georgia race that could determine whether Democrats maintain control of the Senate.

“Our politicians work for us,” said Melissa Altschiller, an organizer with March for Our Lives. “If they continue to make decisions about our bodies, we will continue to make decisions about their jobs.”

Roughly two-thirds of 18- to 24-year old voters in the 2020 presidential election voted for Joe Biden, NBC revealed — 11 percentage points more than any other age group. Between Generation Z and Millennials, who on many social issues, are eligible to vote in the 2022 election cycle.��

“I think we’re going to see young people continuing to organize around this going forward,” said Levenson.

Exactly half have no mandate that schools teach sex education, from the Institute reveals, and only four of the 26 require curricula to cover the topic of contraception. Twenty-three allow districts to skip over consent entirely.

Restricting abortion access in a country that already limits young people’s resources for learning about sexual health is “a horrifying picture,” said Cassandra Corrado, a sex educator who works with high school and college students in Florida, where an abortion ban now is expected.

“We’re going to have a lot of people being afraid of their own bodies and we’re going to have a lot of people turning to unreliable sources of information,” she told �鶹��Ʒ.

Teens who receive comprehensive sex education are significantly less likely to have unwanted pregnancies than those who don’t get lessons on the topic or receive abstinence-only teachings, show. The five states with the — Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alabama — are also among those set to outlaw abortion if Roe is overturned.

Nationwide, only 29 states and Washington, D.C. require public school students to receive any form of sex education and just 18 require such teachings to be medically accurate.

With the map of U.S. sex ed laws patchy at best, a published by Politico on Monday evening revealed that the Supreme Court appears poised to reverse the 1973 Roe decision, which guarantees federal constitutional protection of abortion rights. Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed Tuesday that the .

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” writes Justice Samuel Alito on behalf of the majority. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

If the 50-year-old ruling falls, 22 states have laws that will immediately take effect outlawing abortion, including trigger bans and clauses in their state constitutions. Analysts expect four more to ban the procedures legislatively.

Matisse Laufgraben is a rising sophomore at Indiana University Bloomington where she works as student leader promoting sexual well-being on campus with the organization . Attending school in a state that has enacted 55 abortion restrictions and bans in the past decade, paving the way for a comprehensive ban should Roe be struck down, she’s hyper-aware of the fallout for her and her peers.

“If you get pregnant, you [will] have to deal with the consequences. There’s no escape,” she told �鶹��Ʒ. “It takes away that freedom for women.”

Despite Laufgraben’s work to inform peers about consent and healthy relationships, there’s still a “​�ċscary amount of sexual assault cases and sexual violence” on campus, she said. The prospect of abortion access rolling back in her state amplifies such fears, she explained, especially for female-identifying students who are more likely to be assault victims.

“It feels like we don’t have control over what happens to our bodies. … We don’t have control over whether or not we get sexually assaulted. And then we don’t have control over whether or not we want to have the baby,” said the college student. “It really just feels like everything is turned against us.”

The state abortion bans have an inverse relationship with rules requiring comprehensive sex ed. Of the 26 states expected to enact abortion bans in the coming months, only Iowa, Tennessee and Utah mandate sexual education in school and require that lessons be medically accurate. South Carolina is the sole state among the 26 that orders schools teach sex education and also requires lessons on consent.

Meanwhile, were filed in U.S. statehouses during the first three months of 2022, including “Don’t Say Gay” laws and bans on trans-related books in school. Many of the laws would bar educators from discussing or providing students with materials involving sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the .

“It’s not a coincidence that … state abortion restrictions are getting tighter at the same time as we’re seeing more restrictions on sex education, more restrictions on trans youth and how they can engage in schools,” said Corrado.

With laws stipulating what schools staff can and can’t discuss in Florida classrooms, many of her colleagues have to walk a “fine line,” she said, in order to deliver the information that youth — especially those who identify as queer, trans or nonbinary — need for their sexual well-being.

“As sex educators, one of the conversations that we’re having all the time right now is ‘How can we … protect our careers and also still be giving people the information that they need,’ ” said Corrado.

Even though schools in her state legally must provide lessons on sex education, she said, they often give students an incomplete or even false picture. According to state law, curricula need not be medically accurate, may promote religion and must stress the importance of abstinence.

“We shouldn’t assume that students are getting [accurate] information in schools right now, because they might not be,” said Corrado.

Since Sept. 1, the country’s most restrictive ban on abortion has prevented Texans from accessing care if their pregnancy is beyond six weeks. 

Two weeks after the law’s signing, then-high school senior Paxton Smith went viral for swapping her pre-approved valedictorian address to speak out against the legislation in her home state. 

Since giving the speech, Smith says her life has taken a “massive shift.” Now a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, she balances full-time school with beginning a music career and expanding her activism. 

Smith is leading A War on My Body; A War on My Rights, a featuring contributors across generations, from medical professionals to reproductive rights activists and prominent women’s rights attorneys and . The book’s title references of her valedictory address.   

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Her activist work, it seems, is just beginning. Smith also serves on advisory boards for two nonprofits: , which uses art and storytelling to end abortion stigmas and shame, and the , which helps individuals access safe abortions and contraceptives across the country. And on Sept. 30, she delivered another speech at Power of Women event, ending with a call to action: 

“And if you can’t do it for me, and if you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for every girl who comes after us, every young person who comes after us. Because they are counting on you. So what will you do?”

It’s unclear when Smith and others Texans will regain access to legal abortions. Though a to the conservative Fifth Circuit. The Supreme Court did not delay or prevent the law from taking effect, refusing to act on an emergency appeal made by abortion providers in early September. will likely not pass the Senate. 

President Biden has openly the Texas ban, issuing a statement that it “will significantly impair women’s access to the health care they need, particularly for communities of color and individuals with low incomes.”

Health care providers, lawyers and activists await December 1, when the Supreme Court will hear a Mississippi case challenging the state’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks. Their decision may upend or solidify Roe v. Wade’s protection of the right to choose prior to “viability,” typically around 24 weeks.

�鶹��Ʒ spoke with Paxton Smith to get a pulse on how she feels given federal moves and why she’s decided to continue her activism through the collaborative book. 

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

What spurred your personal activism — was it in any way connected to or motivated by your education experiences? 

My personal activism really sparked with the speech. In giving the speech, really what I wanted was for people to understand how it felt, what it really meant for a piece of legislation like this to go into effect and understand that having a pregnancy can have life-changing effects. Nobody else should have the right to make that life-changing decision than me. I am the person that’s going to live that future and I should be the one making those decisions. I wanted people to understand … what it felt like for the decision to be taken out of my hands and put into the hands of a stranger.

I know you’ve mentioned before that your family has often had open conversations on politics and other controversial issues at home even though you sometimes disagree — did you have that openness to talk and explore these issues during the school day as well? 

Sometimes. I think in high school, a lot of times you find a niche group, where they carry a lot of the same perspectives, the same ideas. I didn’t necessarily have the exact same opportunity at school, where people might have had very different opinions than I do. But we definitely did have conversations about politics and things surrounding general human rights.  

Why did you decide to continue your activism through a bigger project? How did you choose a collaborative book, and what impact do you hope that model of storytelling might have? 

One of the things that this book is going to do is try and highlight the different perspectives around abortion that people don’t talk about. It’s going to highlight the racial disparities in being able to access health care. It’s going to address what it’s like being gender queer and being in a situation where you can get pregnant. It’s going to address the LGBTQ+ experience, the experience of being a minor. 

The reason it’s a collaborative book is really to better accomplish that goal, of telling those stories and different perspectives. If I wrote this book alone it would come from an 18- year-old, white, upper middle-class cisgendered girl. It would continue the problem of people’s voices not being listened to, and that’s not what I wanted.

What stories or issues stuck with you after submitting the first draft of the book? 

I can’t really speak to the stories in the book as of right now. But I receive hundreds of messages from people, and a lot of times people share their stories surrounding abortion. Some of the biggest things that stuck with me are the stories of what took place before Roe v. Wade, when abortion was still illegal, and people had to take medical care into their own hands. 

They were getting these back-alley, unsafe abortions and . Thousands of people ended up in emergency rooms. And thousands ended up with severe, life-long injuries. Just hearing these stories — firsthand accounts of people in emergency rooms and doctors saying they are not willing to help because they’re scared of the legal implications, or hearing the stories of people who lost their mothers to unsafe abortions — those really stick with me and motivate what I can try to do.

How did you learn about the and choose it as the place to direct proceeds? 

I actually heard about the Afiya Center at a that was organized by a . Ultimately we chose them because they address the racial disparities in accessing reproductive health care. It’s incredibly important to be able to open up access to more than just white people, because everyone deserves reproductive rights and access to care.

Do you see a future for yourself in education or politics? If not those fields in particular, what are you hoping to do in the future?

I’m actually hoping to become a musical performing artist. I make pop and pop-alternative music. I mostly do it alone. I played trumpet for about eight years and am pretty novice at piano and guitar. My main thing is music production.

Right now, I’m working on putting together a first album. I’m sending out some music to people to see what they think. It’s very much in the early stages but I’m excited to pursue music as a career. That has been my dream since I was a child and I have been so involved with music my entire life. 

Why did you choose to stay in Texas and attend UT Austin?

I chose UT Austin mostly because of the music scene. There’s a lot of music downtown so I’m hoping to do some live gigs once or twice a week. My life has taken a massive shift with the speech and the activism takes up a lot of time. 

What are your songs about? Do you imagine incorporating your activism into your lyrics and songwriting?

I think there’s definitely room to incorporate activism in songwriting. Generally, I write music about what I’m experiencing, thinking and feeling. My life is what runs through the core of all my music, so naturally some of it will be charged with my activism.

I wonder if we could reflect briefly about what’s happening at the federal level. SCOTUS refused to block Texas’s law and the House passed the Women’s Health Protection Act, an attempt to codify the rights established with Roe, though it’s unlikely to pass the Senate. The Department of Justice is also your home state, but that hasn’t reopened access. How are you feeling in light of these moves? How do you hope your peers might push for reproductive rights at this moment?

I’m feeling very hopeful. Really right now there’s a lot of things up in the air and it’s kind of hard to tell where things will land. I’m hoping that my peers continue to do what they’re doing now, which is putting pressure on legislators, bringing attention to the topic and all in all, making it extremely clear that they believe that abortion is a human right. 

A War on My Body; A War on My Rights will be released Jan. 22, 2022, the 49th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, by Di Angelo Publications, a small press in Houston. All proceeds will be donated to , a reproductive justice organization run by and for Black women and girls to transform relationships to sexual and reproductive health. The center educates and provides resources to break down racial inequities, decreasing maternal death and HIV rates. 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday announced that it will hear , a case involving Maine’s tuition assistance program. Following the court’s decision last year in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, plaintiffs in the case argue that excluding religious schools from the program is a violation of their constitutional rights, while the state has said the program is only meant to provide students a public education they can’t access in their own community.��

School choice advocates celebrated the court’s decision. In a statement, Leslie Hiner, who leads EdChoice’s legal efforts, said, “We applaud the action of the Court in agreeing to hear a case brought by parents in Maine who have been denied the opportunity to send their children to a school of faith using the state’s town tuitioning vouchers.”

The U.S. Supreme Court will discuss Thursday whether to hear a case that could settle for good whether states can exclude religious schools from publicly funded voucher programs.

The argument in is over Maine’s tuition assistance program, which pays for students in towns without a public school to attend another one of their choice — public or private — as long as it’s not religious.

In October last year, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the religious exclusion, and the plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court. But earlier this month the 2nd Circuit reached the , ruling that students in a similar program in Vermont can use public funds at religious schools.

“It is a mess, to put it mildly,” said Michael Bindas, a senior attorney with the libertarian Institute for Justice, which is representing the two families in Maine who sued over the state’s policy. The contradiction “cries out for Supreme Court review, and only the Supreme Court can resolve it,” he said.

This time last year, school choice advocates won a major victory in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, when the court ruled 5-4 that officials could not exclude religious schools from a state tax credit scholarship program simply because they are religious. It was a major setback for states with so-called Blaine amendments, 19th century laws that prevent public funds from supporting religious schools. The Espinoza ruling sparked a renewed push at the state level to expand such scholarship programs, and former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos the decision opened the door for religious-oriented charter schools.

The justices, however, left one issue unsettled. The Espinoza ruling means states can’t prohibit religious schools from participating in a school choice program because of their religious status, but the justices didn’t resolve whether states could exclude schools because they teach students about religion.

The Institute for Justice addressed this in to the court following the 2nd Circuit’s decision in the Vermont case, referring to “the utter disarray of the law in this area.”

The court typically schedules days when the justices discuss current cases as well as whether to hear or reject appeals. The “order list” is usually released a day or so after justices hold a conference, Bindas explained. That means the court could announce as soon as Monday whether they’ll hear the Carson case, but a quick decision could mean they’re going to pass, he added. If the justices decide to hold it over for a “cleanup conference” next week, that could signal their intention to hear the case.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey has said that the state’s law doesn’t discriminate against religious schools because it is “simply declining to pay for religious instruction that would be unavailable in a public school.” Ted Fisher, spokesman for the Vermont Agency of Education, said the department doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

Anti-discrimination policies

If the justices agree to hear it, Carson could be the first school choice case before the court since the confirmation of Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative Catholic who served as a trustee for a religious school that participates in Indiana’s school choice program and doesn’t welcome children with same-sex parents.

The Espinoza ruling was a 5-4 decision, and conservatives now hold a 6-3 supermajority on the court.

Some legal experts have suggested the court’s decision last week in — a case involving a Catholic social services agency that opposes certifying same-sex couples as foster parents — would have an impact on school voucher programs.

In Fulton, the court ruled unanimously that the city violated the agency’s First Amendment’s religious freedom protections by requiring it to give up its opposition to same-sex relationships in order to receive a government contract. The connection to school choice is that religious schools, such as the one where Barrett served as a trustee, are often opposed to hiring LGBTQ staff or admitting gay students or those with gay parents.

But the impact of the decision on school choice programs is limited. While the opinion was unanimous, the court focused on a narrow exemption in the city’s contract with the agency.

“Fulton does not create a right to religious exemptions from anti-discrimination laws that apply equally to everyone,” said Alex Luchenitser, associate vice president and associate legal director at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “State constitutional prohibitions and laws that prohibit use of public funds to support religious instruction generally do not have any exemptions and so should not be affected by Fulton.”

The issue is relevant in , a case before a Maryland district court. The state excluded the religious school from a voucher program because the school’s handbook says it “supports a biblical view of marriage” and that “God immutably bestows gender upon each person at birth as male or female.” The school, which serves low-income students, said these statements don’t impact its admissions process, but the state still declined to admit it to the program.

The state is expected to submit a brief Friday requesting a decision in the case, with the plaintiff’s request expected in July.

Bindas, with the Institute for Justice, noted that the plaintiffs in the Maine case are arguing that families attending any religious school should be able to participate in a state’s school choice program. As it stands, Vermont could try to get around the appeals court’s decision by passing new legislation excluding religious schools because they teach students about doctrine or have a time for worship.

“Using public funds for religious instruction violates the religious freedom of taxpayers who are forced to subsidize faiths to which they do not subscribe,” said Luchenitser, who has argued that the court should decline to hear the appeal in the Carson case.

Dave and Amy Carson kept their daughter Olivia at the Christian school she attends but that doesn’t participate in the tuition assistance program. The other plaintiffs in the case, Angela and Troy Nelson, wanted to send their children to a religious school, but instead sent their two children to a secular private school that accepts vouchers.

“You either forgo the benefit,” Bindas said, “or you forgo the school that you think is best for your child.”

In a broader sense, the Fulton decision shows the court continues to move toward a “more aggressive” position in favor of religious rights, said Joshua Dunn, a political science professor at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.

“The reasoning of Espinoza … is hard to square with the 1st Circuit’s opinion,” Dunn said, adding that if the court decides to hear the case, “Maine should be very worried.”