December 15, 2025

Now, on to the news…

This past May, the Supreme Court ruled on Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond—a case testing whether a state law forbidding religious charter schools violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. Thanks to a 4-4 split decision (with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recusal), the court kept Oklahoma’s law in place but left the door open for future challenges to similar state laws.

That challenge is here, writes Ilya Shapiro: “Right before Thanksgiving, Tennessee attorney general Jonathan Skrmetti issued an opinion concluding that key provisions of his state’s charter school law likely violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.” Five days later, Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville, which plans to open a Christian charter school, filed a federal lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s religious charter ban.

“The core legal question—left unresolved by Drummond—is whether charter schools are best understood as public schools (and thus state actors) or as privately run schools providing a public service under contract,” Shapiro writes. Read his assessment here.

Over the years, the disparate-impact doctrine—which states that discrimination doesn’t have to be intentional to be illegal—has crept into civil rights laws. If, for instance, a landlord refuses to rent to tenants with criminal records, and that stance affects some demographic groups more than others, it would be treated as illegal if challenged.

Thankfully, the Trump administration is cracking down, most recently by “removing disparate impact from its regulations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Robert VerBruggen explains, “which apply to federally funded programs.”

Truly rooting out disparate impact will require more than executive action, however. Read VerBruggen’s take.

A bipartisan chorus has claimed for years that, by routing federal foster-care aid through general funds, state governments are stealing money from orphans. The Trump administration just sent letters to 39 governors accusing them of “intercept[ing]” dollars meant for these children.

But as Emily Putnam-Hornstein and Naomi Schaefer Riley argue, this arrangement is actually protecting foster kids. By serving as payees for children in their custody, states are complying with federal law—and ensuring that money meant for orphans doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Read more here.

“Progressives are planning for a post-constitutional America. It’s time for conservatives to catch up.”

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David C., commenting on New York’s Municipal Home Rule Law

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