The Supreme Court was petitioned Monday to take up a case challenging the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision to block the approval of what would be the nation's first religious charter school.
The state’s high court ruled in July that the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board could not authorize a charter for St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School based solely on its religious nature. Now, the appeal is joining a list of hot-button religious freedom cases that the justices have been asked to consider.
"Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more choices, not fewer," said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Phil Sechler, who is representing the charter school board.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican who called the ruling against St. Isidore a "tremendous victory for religious liberty," filed the original lawsuit against the Catholic charter school.
Drummond said Monday that allowing the Catholic charter school would "open the floodgates and force taxpayers to fund all manner of religious indoctrination, including radical Islam or even the Church of Satan."
The Republican attorney general said Oklahomans can "rest assured that I will always fight to protect their God-given rights and uphold the law."
Sechler highlighted the "irony" in state officials, such as Drummond, advocating religious liberty while simultaneously "discriminating" against St. Isidore because of its Catholic foundation.
After the state Supreme Court's decision in July, the charter school board was left with no other choice but to rescind its contract ahead of the fall semester, when it was scheduled to commence classes.
ADF argued that the ruling violated the Constitution’s protections for religious freedom, as well as recent Supreme Court decisions that help religious organizations not be excluded from public programs merely due to their religious character.
One major case the plaintiffs based their arguments on is Carson v. Makin, a 6-3 decision that came down in 2022, finding Maine's "nonsectarian" requirement for the state's tuition assistance program for private schools violated the Free Exercise Clause.
"Oklahoma can now exclude 'sectarian' charter schools — even a privately run, statewide virtual charter school open to all students and funded based on parents’ choices to enroll their students," according to the high court petition calling to undo the state Supreme Court's July ruling.
The petition also raised a broader constitutional problem, including a circuit split over the definition of "state action." ADF contends that immediate intervention from the court is necessary to ensure consistent interpretation of religious liberty protections across lower courts.
Against the backdrop of the petition filed Monday, Oklahoma has become an even stronger beacon for Christian values and subject to criticism, in part thanks to actions taken by Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters.
Walters previously called the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision "shameful" and, in recent weeks, has pushed an initiative for the state to incorporate the Bible into public school curricula.
ADF seeks to reverse this ruling and restore what it claims are essential constitutional protections for religious schools and families in Oklahoma.
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"Protecting the freedom of St. Isidore and other charter schools to operate according to their beliefs bolsters religious freedom across Oklahoma, which is why we are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take this important case," Sechler said.
The Supreme Court receives thousands of petitions each year and usually grants less than 1% of its total submissions, though the high court in recent years has shown an appetite for granting more religious freedom disputes.
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