Oklahoma Board Asks Supreme Court To Further Dismantle Wall Between Church And Schools

From Forbes.com

The Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board has petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the state supreme court and give the okay to the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious school. They are also asking the court to insure that the school remains free of any government regulation. The board is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian legal advocacy firm that drafted the Mississippi anti-abortion law that led to the Dobbs decision.

Should the Supreme Court agree to hear the case and decide in favor of the board, the decision would radically change the face of United States public education.

How did we get here?

Oklahoma’s charter law bars approval of religious charter schools. In 2022, at the request of the state board, Attorney General John O’Connor issued a fifteen page opinion that in the wake of Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson, he believed that SCOTUS would “very likely” find Oklahoma’s charter law restriction on nonsectarian or religious charters unconstitutional. The opinion was issued in December, after O’Connor had lost the GOP primary for reelection, but before he left office.

PROMOTED

The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City collaborated with the Diocese of Tulsa to propose a virtual charter—St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, named for a sixth-century catholic bishop and scholar, who is patron saint of the internet (a "saint who can help us find what we need as well as protect us from the darker side of the World Wide Web").

Upon taking office, O’Connor’s successor disavowed the opinion. In February of 2023, Oklahoma State Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued an opinion opposing state approval a church-run charter school. He argued that O’Connor’s opinion “misuses the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion. If allowed to remain in force, I fear the opinion will be used as a basis for taxpayer-funded religious schools.”

Drummond saw a problem with opening the door to a taxpayer-funded religious charter; the state would then have to fund religious charters of all sorts, including sorts that Oklahoma taxpayers didn’t want.

Read the rest of the story here.