A Supreme Court case has pitted Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond against members of his own party.
The justices will hear arguments later this week over a bid to open the nation’s first publicly-funded religious charter school in Oklahoma.
Why It Matters
Drummond sued Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board to stop the establishment of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School in 2023, arguing it violated Oklahoma law and both the state and U.S. Constitutions. The Oklahoma Supreme Court sided with Drummond last year.
The AG’s position is at odds with Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt and State Superintendent Ryan Walters, also a Republican, who favor the school.
Newsweek has contacted Drummond, Stitt and Walters for comment via email.
The case is being closely watched as supporters believe recent decisions by the Supreme Court have shown it is amenable in some cases to public funds going to religious entities. Conservative-led states have increasingly sought to insert religion into public schools, such as Louisiana requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms.
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What To Know
Last June, the Oklahoma Supreme Court held that the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board’s vote to approve an application by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma for the school violates the Establishment Clause, which prohibits government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”
The ruling also says state law, which requires charter schools to be nonsectarian, was violated.
Drummond, who is running for governor, called the decision from Oklahoma’s top court a “tremendous victory for religious liberty.”
In a statement at the time, he said that Oklahomans “can be assured that our tax dollars will not fund the teachings of Sharia Law or even Satanism.”
Oklahoma State Superintendent Walters, who is on the school board that approved the school, hit back against Drummond on Fox News on Sunday, saying he is “dead wrong.”
He said: “We have a clear application process that says you’ve got to be a successful school. You’ve got to be a school that parents want, you have to have a track record and application there. And the reality is, the Catholic charter school meets everything there.”
Walters added that President Donald Trump “won a massive election on both fronts, on religious liberty, fighting for that and for fighting for school choice. The country has spoken. Oklahoma has spoken.”
What People Are Saying
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement in October: “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.”
Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters said in a Fox News interview on Sunday that Drummond has “sided with the left on this case, he sided with the teachers’ union and the radical atheist groups to say, ‘parents, you don’t have these rights’… Our Attorney General and the Supreme Court are way out of step with Oklahomans. Oklahomans want school choice. They want to decide this for their kids.”
Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma’s Republican governor, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, last week: “No one should have the authority to tell a parent how to educate their child. St. Isidore has every right to offer families a faith-based education. I’ll keep fighting back against big-government politicians who think they know better than parents.”
What’s Next
Oral arguments are scheduled to take place on April 30, and the case will probably be decided by early summer.
