Garnett on the St. Isidore non-decision

Here is a short piece I did, for the Law & Liberty website, on the recent non-decision in the St. Isidore case.  It's called "Educational Pluralism Delayed".  Here is a bit:

The longstanding American constitutional experiment in religious freedom is not, and never has been, anti-religious. Our governments are “secular,” but they need not and should not be “secularist” in the sense of being hostile to religious institutions and their work and witness in the public square. To be sure, we wisely distinguish between religious and political authorities. We don’t let governors pick bishops, and we don’t let bishops set tax rates. This is what the “separation of church and state,” correctly understood, means. This distinction does not preclude cooperative arrangements between authentically religious schools and governments in the service of opportunity and pluralism.

Although the justices did not reach the merits in the St. Isidore case, their “tie goes to the lower court” order should not be seen as a retreat from settled and sound constitutional principles or as closing the door to innovative policies and programs that expand kids’ access to educational options. There is nothing about public education, properly conceived, that limits it to the work of public employees in government-owned buildings. Children and families benefit, and communities do, too, from pluralism in education. Despite the delay caused by the St. Isidore split, it is increasingly clear that this pluralism is precisely what Americans want.