Under California law, parents are allowed to create free charter schools in local school districts to allow parents to have a personal impact on their children’s education. In this program, students are allowed to do an independent study which allows parents to homeschool their children instead of normal classroom based learning. Through this program, families receive a state account with funding for school supplies and other school-related expenses. Parents get to choose what curriculum their children follow, while the charter schools monitor attendance records and credits. One main stipulation with this way of learning is that parents cannot use the state’s funding to purchase religious curricula, nor can they purchase non-religious curricula from a religious publisher. The charter schools also do not accept credit from work that is related to religion in any way. This case stems from that stipulation.
In October of 2023, a group of parents sued California school officials under the claim of religious discrimination. The First Liberty Institute, along with King & Spalding LLP are spearheading the lawsuit. The plaintiffs have claimed that the charter schools have restricted their access to funds, rejected a student's credit, and in one case, expelled a family from the charter school. The plaintiffs argue that The U.S. Department of Education has historically taken the stance that schools cannot deny a student credit based on their work coming from a religious viewpoint. In April of 2024, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, but the attorneys are appealing this decision.
The question at hand is: does disqualifying a student from state funded schooling based on the fact that they are using religious materials in their education violate the free exercise clause?
I would argue that this does violate the free exercise clause. Using evidence from Carson v. Makin (2021), a similar case where students were denied financial aid due to them choosing to go to a religious school, we see that the court decided it violated the free exercise clause to deny families “otherwise available scholarship funds at religious schools.” The state was not allowed to make decisions on scholarships to some schools and not other schools based on religion.
In the case of the California charter schools, some students are receiving credit and funding for their education while others are not based on religious learning. For the government to take a neutral stance on the subject, students should all be allowed to learn regardless of whether they want a religious curriculum or not. The government should neither be incentivizing religion, nor incentivizing a child to be non-religious. One issue with this case however, is that it could lead to a slippery slope where all religious schools will try to fight to have tuition subsidized by the government, but in this case, the schools are meant to have families choose their own curriculum, so therefore they should allow religious ones.
Sources:
https://firstliberty.org/cases/california-charter-schools/#simple1
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-1088