内容摘要：Somali women wait their turn to collect water at a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Somali women wait their turn to collect water at a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

If Roberts sides with the liberals, the court would be tied 4-4, an outcome that would leave the state court decision in place, but would leave the issue unresolved nationally.If he joins his conservative colleagues, on the other hand, the court could find that the taxpayer-funded school is in line with a string of high court decisions that have allowed public funds to flow to religious entities. Those rulings were based on a different part of the First Amendment that protects religious freedom.

Roberts wrote the last three of those decisions. He acknowledged at one point that the court had previously ruled that states “couldn’t exclude religious participants,” suggesting support for St. Isidore.But he also said the state’s involvement in this case is “much more comprehensive” than in the earlier ones, a point that could lead him in the other direction.St. Isidore, a K-12 online school, had planned to start classes for its first 200 enrollees last fall, with part of its mission to evangelize its students in the Catholic faith.

Opponents warn a decision to allow the school to open would sap money from public schools and possibly upend the rules governing charter schools in almost every state.Greg Garre, the lawyer defending the Oklahoma decision, repeatedly urged the justices to consider the broad impact of a ruling for the school.

“This is going to have a dramatic effect on charter schools across the country,” Garre said.

Representing the state charter school board, lawyer James Campbell said Oklahoma’s charter school law discriminates against religion by encouraging diversity, but “deeming religion to be the wrong kind of diversity.”The sun sets, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024, near Monument Valley on the Navajo Nation in Halchita, Utah. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

The sun sets, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024, near Monument Valley on the Navajo Nation in Halchita, Utah. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)For the couple, having grid electricity at their home near Navajo Mountain in Arizona would end a nearly 12 year wait. They currently live in a recreational vehicle elsewhere closer to their jobs, but have worked on their home on the reservation for years. With power there, they could spend more time where Priscilla grew up and where her dad still lives.

It would make life simpler, Priscilla said. “Because otherwise, everything, it seems like, takes twice as long to do.”Naishadham reported from Washington.