Oklahoma Attorney General Sues To Stop Nation’s First Religious Charter School

Attorney General Gentner Drummond has fought every step of the way against the movement to create the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school, and he’s not giving up yet.

Last December, Oklahoma’s former Attorney General John O’Connor issued an opinion stating that in light of recent Supreme Court decisions, he believes that the SCOTUS would “very likely” find unconstitutional the state requirement that charter schools be non-sectarian. The Catholic Church was ready to test that theory; it was in anticipation of their application that the state’s virtual charter board asked the O’Connor for an opinion in the first place.

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”).

There was no question of the church’s intent. An AP report noted, “Archdiocese officials have been unequivocal that the school will promote the Catholic faith and operate according to church doctrine, including its views on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

AG John O’Connor was a Trump nominee for a United States district judge in 2018; the American Bar Association rated him “not qualified,” and his nomination was withdrawn. After Oklahoma’s previous attorney general resigned in May of 2021 over “personal matters,” Governor Stitt appointed O’Connor to the office. O’Connor ran for the office this year and was defeated in the primary, making him a lame duck in the office.

The Republican who defeated him was Gentner Drummond. Once in office, Drummond said he was out to “right the direction of the state” and started undoing some of his predecessor’s work. He dropped a lawsuit against Class Wallet that blamed them for mishandling public funds, and he reversed the AG opinion about the legality of a religious charter school.

Drummond argued that the O’Connor 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 warned of a “slippery slope.” The virtual charter review board ignored him and approved St. Isidore anyway.

Governor Stitt hailed it as “a win for religious liberty and education freedom in our great state.”

Drummond called the decision “contrary to Oklahoma law and not in the best interests of taxpayers.” Furthermore, “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.”

A group of parents, faith leaders and educators filed a lawsuit shortly thereafter. The Rev. Lori Walke, senior minister at Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City and one of the plaintiffs in the case, said, “Creating a religious public charter school is not religious freedom… when we entangle religious schools to the government … we endanger religious freedom for all of us.” That lawsuit has not yet been resolved.

But now Drummond has joined the legal fray. He has sued the virtual charter board as well as members of the statewide charter board.

His position remains consistent. “There is no religious freedom in compelling Oklahomans to fund religions that may violate their own deeply held beliefs,” Drummond said. “The framers of the U.S. Constitution and those who drafted Oklahoma’s Constitution clearly understood how best to protect religious freedom: by preventing the State from sponsoring any religion at all.”

The lawsuit itself minces no words.

The Oklahoma Attorney General is compelled, as chief law officer of the State, to file this original action to repudiate the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board’s (“the Board”) Members’ intentional violation of their oath of office and disregard for the clear and unambiguous provisions of the Oklahoma Constitution

The suit seeks “to undo the unlawful sponsorship” of St. Isidore’s. The suit says that the AG “is duty bound to file this original action to protect religious liberty and prevent the type of state- funded religion that Oklahoma’s constitutional framers and the founders of our country sought to prevent.”

Make no mistake, if the Catholic Church were permitted to have a public virtual charter school, a reckoning will follow in which this State will be faced with the unprecedented quandary of processing requests to directly fund all petitioning sectarian groups…For example, this reckoning will require the State to permit extreme sects of the Muslim faith to establish a taxpayer funded public charter school teaching Sharia Law. Consequently, absent the intervention of this Court, the Board members’ shortsighted votes in violation of their oath of office and the law will pave the way for a proliferation of the direct public funding of religious schools whose tenets are diametrically opposed by most Oklahomans.

In sum, despite the clear and unambiguous language of Oklahoma’s Constitution and statutes, the will of Oklahoma’s voters who soundly rejected amending Oklahoma’s Constitution in 2016 to allow public money to be applied to sectarian organizations, and the legal advice by the chief law officer of this State, the Board members violated their plain legal duty to deny sponsorship of St. Isidore. Accordingly, this Court must remediate the Board’s unlawful action.

Drummond’s argument relies heavily on the claim that this charter is a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. That’s a telling position to stake out, as the Supreme Court’s decisions that figured in O’Connor’s opinion rest on setting the Free Exercise Clause as having greater weight than the Establishment Clause.

Amanda Marcotte has argued that supporters of the religious charter are hoping for a showdown between Drummond’s argument and the Supreme Court that could knock another brick out of the wall between church and state. If so, they now have two chances to get their wish.