The Freedom From Religion Foundation and other leading groups are concerned that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving a religious public charter school in Oklahoma.
Along with FFRF, the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Education Law Center issued the following joint statement about the petitions for certiorari that the Supreme Court granted late afternoon Friday, Jan. 24, in Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board v. Drummond and St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond. The secular and educational organizations represent public school parents, public education advocates and faith leaders in a separate lawsuit to stop Oklahoma from sponsoring and funding St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School.
“The law is clear: Charter schools are public schools and must be secular and open to all students,” the statement reads. “The Oklahoma Supreme Court correctly found that the state’s approval of a religious public charter school was unlawful and unconstitutional. We urge the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm that ruling and safeguard public education, state/church separation, and religious freedom for all. Oklahoma taxpayers, including our plaintiffs, should not be forced to fund a religious public school that plans to discriminate against students and staff and indoctrinate students into one religion. Converting public schools into Sunday schools would be a dangerous sea change for our democracy.”
FFRF, the ACLU, Americans United and the Education Law Center, with support from Oklahoma-based counsel Odom & Sparks PLLC and J. Douglas Mann, represent Oklahomans who object to their tax dollars funding a religious public charter school that will discriminate against students and employees based on their religion and LGBTQ-plus status, won’t commit to adequately serving students with disabilities, and will indoctrinate students into one religion. These nine Oklahomans and OKPLAC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting public education, filed their lawsuit, OKPLAC Inc. v. Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, on July 31, 2023, in the District Court of Oklahoma County.
Following the June 2024 Oklahoma Supreme Court decision in Drummond v. OSVCSB blocking the religious public charter school, the OKPLAC plaintiffs and defendants reached a court-approved agreement to put the OKPLAC case on hold until at least Feb. 1 of this year while developments in the Drummond case are pending. St. Isidore agreed not to accept charter school funding from the state or open to students as a charter school during the 2024-25 school year as part of that agreement.
The plaintiffs in the OKPLAC case include the Oklahoma Parent Legislative Advocacy Coalition, Melissa Abdo, Krystal Bonsall, Leslie Briggs, Brenda Lené, Michele Medley, Dr. Bruce Prescott, Rev. Dr. Mitch Randall, Rev. Dr. Lori Walke and Erika Wright.
The team of attorneys that represents the plaintiffs is led by Alex J. Luchenitser of Americans United and includes Patrick Elliott of FFRF; Jenny Samuels of Americans United; Daniel Mach and Heather L. Weaver of the ACLU; Robert Kim, Jessica Levin and Wendy Lecker of Education Law Center; Benjamin H. Odom, John H. Sparks, Michael W. Ridgeway and Lisa M. Mason of Odom & Sparks; and J. Douglas Mann.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 40,000 members across the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
Americans United is a religious freedom advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, AU educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom. Learn more at www.au.org.
For more than 100 years, the ACLU has worked in courts, legislatures and communities to protect the constitutional rights of all people. With a nationwide network of offices and millions of members and supporters, the ACLU takes on the toughest civil liberties fights in pursuit of liberty and justice for all. For more information on the ACLU, visit www.aclu.org.
Education Law Center pursues justice and equity for public school students by enforcing their right to a high-quality education in safe, equitable, nondiscriminatory, integrated and well-funded learning environments. We seek to support and improve public schools as the center of communities and the foundation of a multicultural and multiracial democratic society. For more information about ELC, visit https://edlawcenter.org/.
