Under Oklahoma law, religious institutions and private sectarian schools are not supposed to participate in the state’s charter school programs. As we discussed last year, however, officials on Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board nevertheless approved the application by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma to establish the St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School.
As the Associated Press reported, the Oklahoma Supreme Court has ruled that members of the charter school board made a mistake.
An Oklahoma board’s approval of what would be the nation’s first publicly funded religious school is unconstitutional and must be rescinded, the state Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday. … The ruling also says both the Oklahoma and U.S. constitutions, as well as state law, were violated.
“Under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school,” Justice James Winchester, an appointee of former Republican Gov. Frank Keating, wrote in the court’s majority opinion. “As such, a charter school must be nonsectarian. However, St. Isidore will evangelize the Catholic school curriculum while sponsored by the state.”
The vote on the state high court wasn’t especially close: This was a 7-1 ruling, with one justice recusing himself.
In case this isn’t obvious, it’s worth emphasizing that Roman Catholic groups have, for many years, received public funds to provide secular social services. It’s not unusual, for example, for a city to contract with a local Catholic Church to host soup kitchens, for example.
This proposal was something altogether different. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma said in the “vision and purpose of the organization” section of its charter school application that the Catholic school “participates in the evangelizing mission of the Church and is the privileged environment in which Christian education is carried out.”
In other words, the local archdiocese simply wanted Oklahoma taxpayers to finance a Catholic parochial school, which church leaders characterized as a charter school.
The state’s current Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, warned that using public funds to finance religious education would be “contrary to Oklahoma law and not in the best interest of taxpayers.”
After a majority of the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved St. Isidore’s application anyway, Drummond added, “It’s extremely disappointing that board members violated their oath in order to fund religious schools with our tax dollars. In doing so, these members have exposed themselves and the state to potential legal action that could be costly.” That was in June 2023. In June 2024, the state attorney general now gets to say, “I told you so.” As for the near future, proponents of taxpayer-financed religion need not give up hope just yet: It’s entirely possible this case will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has been unsubtle in recent years about its hostility toward the separation of church and state, and its regressive perspective on religious liberty in general. Will Republican-appointed justices take up the Oklahoma case and knock another hole in the church-state wall? Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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