Oklahoma Approves First Religious Charter School in the U.S.

The nation’s first religious charter school was approved in Oklahoma on Monday, handing a victory to Christian conservatives, but opening the door to a constitutional battle over whether taxpayer dollars can directly fund religious schools.

The online school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, would be run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, with religious teachings embedded in the curriculum, including in math and reading. Yet as a charter school — a type of public school that is independently managed — it would be funded by taxpayer dollars.

After a nearly three-hour meeting, and despite concerns raised by its legal counsel, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved the school in a 3-to-2 vote, including a “yes” vote from a new member who was appointed on Friday.

The relatively obscure board is made up of appointees by Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who supports religious charter schools, and leaders of the Republican-controlled State Legislature.

The approval — which is almost certain to be challenged in court — comes amid a broader conservative push to allow taxpayer dollars to go toward religious schools, including in the form of universal school vouchers, which have been approved in five states in the last year. The movement has been bolstered by recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, which has increasingly signaled its support for directing taxpayer money to religious schools.

The decision in Oklahoma sets the stage for a high-profile legal fight that could have wide-ranging implications for charter schools, which make up 8 percent of public schools in the United States.

Opponents had lined up against the proposal, arguing that it was a brazen and messy melding of church and state, and one that ran afoul of the public nature of charter schools.

St. Isidore’s organizers hope any legal challenge will press the courts to definitively answer whether government money can be directly spent on religious schools.

“We invite the challenge, for the sake of the country and answering that question,” said Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, which represents the Catholic Church on policy issues and is behind the proposal.

In Supreme Court rulings in 2020 and 2022, the court ruled that religious schools could not be excluded from state programs that allowed parents to send their children to private schools using government-financed scholarship or tuition programs. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that while states were not required to support religious education, if a state chooses to subsidize any private schools, it may not discriminate against religious ones.

Supporters in Oklahoma applied similar arguments to St. Isidore, contending that excluding religious schools from charter funding is a violation of the First Amendment’s prohibition of religious freedom.

“Not only may a charter school in Oklahoma be religious but indeed it would be unlawful to prohibit the operation of such a school,” the school’s organizers wrote in its application.

The move for a religious charter school was opposed by a range of groups, including pastors and religious leaders in Oklahoma, who feared a blurring of the separation of church and state. Leaders in the charter school movement were also opposed.

“Charter schools were conceived as, and have always been, innovative public schools,” Nina Rees, president and chief executive of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said in April. She added that, as public schools, charters cannot teach religious instruction.

A key legal question is whether charter schools are “state actors,” representing the government, or “private actors,” more like a government contractor. That question is central to another case, out of North Carolina, which the Supreme Court is weighing whether to take up.

In Oklahoma, the state board that oversees virtual charter schools had been under intense political pressure, with top state Republicans disagreeing over whether a religious charter school was allowable.

At a board meeting in April, board members debated the matter extensively and fretted whether they could face personal legal challenges over their decision.

With its application approved, St. Isidore, named after the patron saint of the internet, is one step closer to opening.

It would open no sooner than fall 2024, offering online classes to about 500 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.