This article was first published in the State of Faith newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Monday night.
The Supreme Court’s religious charter school case came in with a bang and ended with a tie.
The justices announced Thursday that they were “equally divided” in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, which means the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling against the first-of-its-kind school remains in place.
The possibility of a deadlocked court had been floated ever since Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself. Still, Thursday’s announcement felt surreal — and anticlimactic.
Well, maybe anticlimactic is the wrong word. I wasn’t so much disappointed as I was unsettled by the idea that the country is no closer to a consensus on religious charter schools today than it was before the Oklahoma case was fully briefed and argued.
But admitting that probably makes me sound naive. Multiple closely watched Supreme Court cases have ended in ties over the past decade, or in extremely narrow rulings that said little about underlying constitutional questions.
Ties on the Supreme Court can stem from recusals, as the Drummond ruling did, or from vacancies.
After Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, a few notable cases ended with a 4-4 vote, including United States v. Texas, which was about the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which was about public school unions.
Ties stemming from recusals are particularly common after a new justice is appointed to the court, because the justice can’t participate in cases they considered or worked on in their previous position.
In the case of a tie at the Supreme Court level, the lower court decision remains in place.
Tie rulings may become more common moving forward as the justices adapt to the court’s relatively new ethics code.
The code, which was adopted in 2023, puts more pressure on the justices to track and disclose potential conflicts of interest.
The new ethics rules likely explain why four justices recused themselves this month from considering whether to hear a case that involved a prominent book publisher, according to The Washington Post. Because there weren’t six justices left to vote, the lower court ruling will remain in place.
Fresh off the press
First-of-its-kind religious charter school blocked by deadlocked Supreme Court
Prayer service at Pentagon sparks religious freedom debate
New research on astrology, tarot cards and fortune tellers is full of surprises
Place of the week: Omega Gym
Omega Gym in Rome caters to an unusual clientele: priests, nuns and monsignors from the Vatican City.
Pope Leo XIV went there several times a week over the past two years — when he was still known as Robert Prevost — as he tried to improve his “posture and cardiovascular capacity,” according to The Associated Press.
“When the name of the pope was announced, my phone rings and my son tells me, ‘Dad, it’s Robert! Robert, our member!’” Francesco Tamburlani, the owner of the gym, told the AP. “I heard the gym staff behind him cheering. ... This moved us, filled us with joy.”
Tamburlani added that Pope Leo’s gym membership is still active, although it’s unclear if he’ll be able to use it.
“We would organize our gym to guarantee his safety and his privacy. We would just need a sign,” he told the AP.
What I’m reading...
By now, you’re probably sick of hearing about young people drifting away from organized religion. But I’m only bringing that up again now to help explain my fascination with the fact that engagement with religious programming is actually on the rise on college campuses across the country. “People want to feel loved for who they are and not what they do,” Chaz Lattimore Howard, the university chaplain at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Atlantic. Whether or not they believe in God, they “want to be reassured that it’s going to be okay.”
In his latest article for Religion Unplugged, my friend Bobby Ross Jr. offered an in-depth look at a faith-focused event that set the stage for a Detroit Tigers baseball game.
NPR recently visited a small community south of Tampa, Florida, that’s reeling after a beloved local pastor was unexpectedly detained by ICE. The Rev. Maurilio Ambrocio had paperwork allowing him to be in the United States and checked in with immigration agents regularly, but he was still taken into detention in April. “You’re gonna take you know a community leader, a Pastor, a hard working man … What, did you need a number that day?," one of the pastor’s neighbors told NPR.
Earlier this month, I wrote about a surprising religious freedom battle in Toms River, New Jersey, involving a proposed homeless shelter, a proposed pickleball court and eminent domain. The New York Times covered the same conflict last week and summarized the latest developments.
Odds and ends
Hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend! Now it’s time for the most important holiday season of all: my birthday week.