Almost 100 years ago, a group of nuns joined a suit against the state of Oregon – and made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Their cause? Keeping Catholic schools open. In 1922, voters approved an initiative requiring almost all children ages 8-16 to attend public schools – a motion aimed at closing faith-based schools in particular.

But the Supreme Court’s 1925 ruling in their case, Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus and Mary, favored the nuns. The ruling became a Magna Carta of sorts for private schools, including faith-based ones, safeguarding their right to operate – both secular and religious. Equally as importantly, Pierce has been used to protect parental rights to make choices about their children’s education.

Nonpublic schools such as the ones run by the Society of Sisters no longer must defend their rights to exist. Today, the pendulum has swung the other way: In recent years, the Supreme Court has increasingly allowed public funding to go to faith-based schools, their students or both.

On April 2, 2024, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that could reshape rules even further: whether to allow a Catholic charter school to open its doors, which critics say would all but demolish the line between church and state in education.

In 1922, Oregon voters approved an initiative requiring parents of children ages 8-16 to send them to public schools. The act carved out many exceptions, including for children who had already completed eighth grade or lived too far away, but did not include private schools among them.

The law would have effectively outlawed nonpublic schools. This push came just as the influence of nativist groups such as the Know-Nothing Party, which opposed the largely Catholic waves of immigrants as un-American, began to........

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