Oklahoma board rejects first taxpayer-funded religious school in US

By Brad Brooks

(Reuters) -An Oklahoma school board on Tuesday unanimously rejected the Catholic Church's application to create the first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in the U.S., taking a first step toward a long legal battle testing the concept of separation of church and state.

Roman Catholic organizers propose creating the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to offer an online education for kindergarten through high school initially for 500 students and eventually 1,500.

Oklahoma's Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, which considers applications for charter schools that operate virtually in the state, denied the application in a 5-0 vote.

Board chairman Robert Franklin said in a phone interview before the meeting that it was not unusual to deny a school's application on a first vote but later approve it. Republican state officials appointed all five board members.

During Tuesday's meeting, Franklin and other board members emphasized that they were not voting on the constitutionality of such a school, but whether the application met the board's standards.

Charter schools are publicly funded, independently run schools established under the terms of a charter with a local or national authority.

The church has 30 days to adjust its application to answer board concerns that included the proposed special education program and conflicts in school governance. Once a new application is submitted, the board will take another vote.

Any legal fight could test the scope of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment "establishment clause," which restricts government officials from endorsing any particular religion, or promoting religion over nonreligion.

Church officials have said they hope the case will reach the U.S. Supreme Court, where a 6-3 conservative majority has taken an expansive view of religious rights, including in two rulings since 2020 concerning schools in Maine and Montana.

The school would cost Oklahoma taxpayers up to $25.7 million over its first five years of operation, its organizers said. The idea came from the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. The law school at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic institution in Indiana, helped with the application.

Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, said St. Isidore is intended primarily to meet the needs of rural families who desire a Catholic education but do not live close to any physical schools.

Farley, whose organization represents the church on public policy issues, said the recent Supreme Court decisions made him optimistic that the justices would eventually allow a publicly funded Catholic charter school.

Board chairman Franklin said parents, teachers and many groups representing public education had contacted him to say they are vexed and opposed to the archdiocese's application.

The proposal's critics worry about the consequences of allowing taxpayer-funded religious schools.

"Americans need to wake up to the reality that religious extremists are coming for our public schools," said Rachel Laser, president of the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

It remains an open question how the school would balance federal and state nondiscrimination rules such as those barring discrimination based on sexual orientation. The school's stated aim in its application is to hire educators who live by the doctrine of the Catholic Church, which according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops considers homosexuality a sin.

Farley said he could not answer questions about such hypothetical cases as hiring a gay teacher or admitting a gay student, but expressed confidence that the school could "square with state regulations, federal regulations and operate within the protections that precedent has given us."

"This idea of separation of church and state is not constitutional, it's not anywhere in the Constitution's text," Farley said.

Laser disagreed and said her organization would fight the Catholic Church in any court over St. Isidore and any other publicly funded religious school.

"There is an attack being waged on public schools in Oklahoma, and that attack is to convert public schools into religious schools," Laser said.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Additional reporting by John Kruzel in Washington; Editing by Donna Bryson, Jonathan Oatis and Howard Goller)