Restricting Religious Names: Three Recent Cases

Dmytro Vovk is a visiting associate professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

The name of a religious group is usually considered an aspect of its autonomy. The name can be based on religious history and theology and serve as the group’s self-representation to its members, the public, and the state. Other posts in this blog series discuss how, from the perspective of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB), a religiously neutral state can interfere in naming for non-religious reasons, such as protection of intellectual rights, prohibition of morally inappropriate or pejorative names, or prior use of the names by other religious organizations. These restrictions apply similarly to religious organizations and to NGOs, political parties, and even business corporations alike.

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Three Observations on the Catholic Charter School Case

Frederick Mark Gedicks is emeritus professor of law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently affirmed, by a four-to-four vote, a decision by the Oklahoma Supreme Court that the state could not fund a Catholic virtual charter school because this would violate anti-establishment provisions of the Oklahoma Constitution and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Drummond ex rel. State v. Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, 2024 OK 53, 558 P.3d 1 (6–2 dec.), aff’d by equally divided ct., Nos. 24-394 & -396 (U.S. May 22, 2025) (per curiam), 2025 WL 1459364. (Paragraph numbers below correspond to the official report of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.)

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