The Supreme Court on Thursday, in a 4-4 ruling, said Oklahoma cannot create the nation's first religious charter school funded directly with taxpayer dollars.
It’s probably better than we could have reasonably hoped for with this court, but a 4/4 split that doesn’t create any nationwide precedent to enforce the super unambiguous “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” language in the first amendment is still pretty bad. We dodged a bullet but the gun is still loaded.
Because the Supreme Court divided evenly, its decision is not a binding precedent nationwide and sets the stage for the entire court to reconsider the issue in a future case, perhaps from another state.
It’s probably better than we could have reasonably hoped for with this court, but a 4/4 split that doesn’t create any nationwide precedent to enforce the super unambiguous “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” language in the first amendment is still pretty bad. We dodged a bullet but the gun is still loaded.