The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School and the charter school board in Oklahoma asked the U.S. Supreme Court Monday to review a previous decision prohibiting the school from opening due to its religious affiliation.
Oklahoma’s virtual charter school board had voted to approve what would have been the first publicly-funded religious charter school in 2023 until the state’s supreme court ruled in June that it was unconstitutional after a lawsuit from the state’s attorney general. St. Isidore and the charter school board filed petitions Monday, asking the Supreme Court to review whether or not the state is violating the Free Exercise Clause by excluding religious schools from the state’s charter school program.
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“This case presents the ideal vehicle to resolve that exceptionally important question,” the St. Isidore petition states. “Nearly every state has freed privately operated charter schools from government interference to foster operational independence, parental choice, and educational innovation. As a result, charter schools have flourished. But shackling them with the limitations and obligations of governmental bodies ‘den[ies] their very reason for being’ and promises to thwart the ‘diverse educational options’ they have provided to families across the country.”
St. Isidore’s petition argues that the Oklahoma Supreme Court created a loophole to “penalize the religious liberty” of the school.
Like many other states, Oklahoma created a “state benefit” program for charter schools to be owned and operated by a private organization through the “Charter Schools Act,” the St. Isidore petition notes. The “Charter Schools Act” allows any private college, university, person or organization to apply for state funding in regards to operating a charter school.
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The act bars a sponsor from authorizing a charter school that is affiliated with a private, sectarian school or religious institution, the St. Isidore petition states. However, the school argues that the act also notes that the charter schools can provide a specific “learning philosophy or style or certain subject areas,” allowing for the private governing body to be in charge of the policies and operations of said charter school.
Oklahoma Supreme Court justices initially sided with Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s lawsuit, ruling that the state’s constitution called for a total separation of church and state that reaches beyond the federal constitution, the St. Isidore petition continues.
“I will continue to vigorously defend the religious liberty of all four million Oklahomans,” Drummond said in a Monday press release. “This unconstitutional scheme to create the nation’s first state-sponsored religious charter school will open the floodgates and force taxpayers to fund all manner of religious indoctrination, including radical Islam or even the Church of Satan. My fellow Oklahomans can rest assured that I will always fight to protect their God-given rights and uphold the law.”
The Oklahoma AG’s office deferred the Daily Caller News Foundation to the press release.
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