A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw

By Diana Novak Jones, Mike Scarcella and Sara Merken

Here is today’s top lineup: The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to consider the legality of a religious charter school. Plus, Paul Clement joined the legal team representing the Wisconsin judge arrested in an immigration case; more than 1,100 law students signed onto a court brief supporting Susman Godfrey; and Democratic-led states sued to block the Trump administration from dismantling AmeriCorps. Let’s get going.

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REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments today in a bid led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a major test of religious rights and the separation of church and state in American education, report John Kruzel and Andrew Chung.

Organizers of the proposed school, which would be considered a public school in Oklahoma, and a state school board that backs it have appealed a lower court's ruling that blocked the establishment of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. That court found that the proposed religious charter school would violate the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment limits on government endorsement of religion.

The school’s backers have argued that Oklahoma's refusal to establish St. Isidore as a charter school solely because it is religious is discrimination under the First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion.

The school is being challenged by the state's Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who has argued that denying St. Isidore's charter status does not violate the free exercise clause. Drummond said it rather upholds the state's duty to provide secular education and ensure that public funds are not diverted to religious purposes, preserving the separation of church and state.

That’s the overall pass rate for New York’s February bar exam sitting, a drop from 42% in 2024, reports Karen Sloan. Pass rates at most large states reporting their scores declined in February. New York has the highest number of annual bar examinees in the U.S., with about 14,000.

—More than 1,100 law students and 51 law school organizations in a court brief supporting Susman Godfrey in its lawsuit against the Trump administration. Students from a broad array of law schools, including Ivy League and state universities across the country, signed onto the brief. Read more.