During oral arguments on Wednesday in one of the biggest religion cases in generations, it became clear that the Supreme Court appears all but certain to compel Oklahoma to establish and fund a Catholic charter school, opening the floodgates to mandatory taxpayer support for religious education across the country. Indeed, the Republican-appointed justices took turns accusing the state of engaging in unconstitutional discrimination against religion by declining to admit a church-run academy into its public school system. Their position, if adopted, would transform U.S. public education, striking down restrictions on religious charter schools enshrined in federal statute as well as the laws of 46 states and the District of Columbia. It would bury what remains of church–state separation, forcing every American to subsidize the indoctrination of children into faiths they may not share. And it would further enfeeble secular public education, diverting billions of dollars away from inclusive public schools toward religious academies that openly discriminate against those outside their faith.

The conservative justices, however, did not sound concerned about any of these extreme consequences. If anything, they appeared eager to accelerate them—casting the long-standing nationwide ban on sectarian charter schools as an egregious form of anti-religious bigotry. This Supreme Court has evidently sunk so deep into the mindset of conservative grievance that it now feels victimized by the very concept of public secularism.

Wednesday’s case, Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, was engineered by conservative activists seeking to expand state funding of religious education. They worked with the diocese to create St. Isidore—a full-time virtual Catholic school that provides overtly sectarian instruction—and apply for participation in Oklahoma’s charter school program. The board that runs this program narrowly approved the school’s application, making it the first religious charter school in the nation. But Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, objected; the state’s constitution, he pointed out, forbids the expenditure of public money on any “sectarian institution” and requires that public schools be “free from sectarian control.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court sided with the attorney general last year, ruling that the state constitution prohibits taxpayer funding of St. Isidore.

The school’s lawyers then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that its exclusion from the charter school program violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, presumably because of her close friendship with an attorney advising St. Isidore. The court took up the case nonetheless, reflecting a clear desire among the conservative justices to declare that Oklahoma had violated the school’s constitutional rights.