With only eight justices voting, the 4-4 tie leaves in place an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that a public religious charter school would violate the separation of church and state.

By splitting 4-4 on the question, the justices left in place a lower-court ruling in Oklahoma denying public funding to what would have been the nation’s first religious public

Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general had argued that drastic consequences would follow if the justices sided with the school.