A legal team from the Alliance Defending Freedom has submitted a filing to the Oklahoma Supreme Court opposing a state official’s insistence that the state discriminate against one charter school because it is Catholic.
They cite the determination from the U.S. Supreme, already a precedent, that religious organizations cannot arbitrarily be excluded from a generally available program “solely because of their religious character.”
The fight is ramping up in Okahoma, where Attorney General Gentner Drummond is demanding, through the courts, that St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School be excluded from the state’s charter program because of its faith-based character.
“The board’s decision was informed by the Free Exercise Clause, which prohibits state officials from denying public funding to religious schools simply because they are religious,” said lawyer Phil Sechler, of ADF.
“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more choices, not fewer. The U.S. Constitution and Oklahoma’s Religious Freedom Act both protect St. Isidore’s freedom to operate according to its faith and the board’s decision to approve such learning options for Oklahoma families.
“We urge the state’s high court to reject this legal challenge that discriminates against religion and affirm the constitutionally protected rights of religious groups to be treated the same as their secular counterparts.”
Drummond is insisting that the contract the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board entered with St. Isidore be cancelled.
The board on June 5 adopted a decision to approve the application from St. Isidore.
Then Drummond filed a lawsuit claiming the board was breaking the law.
Drummond, the ADF charged, “asks the court to cancel the contract …. St. Isidore is Catholic. … Far from displaying religious tolerance, Petitioner also singles out ‘sects of the Muslim faith’ as groups who could establish charter schools with tenets ‘diametrically opposed by most Oklahomans,’” the filing states.
“Petitioner grievously misunderstands religion liberty,” the brief explains.
“To be sure, the Oklahoma Charter Schools Act requires charter schools to be ‘nonsectarian’ in their ‘operations’ and prohibits them from ‘affiliating with a … religious institution.’ But the board members took an oath to ‘obey … the Constitution of the United States.’ And that oath prompted their decision to discriminate against St. Isidore based on religion.”
The briefing explained, “Protecting religious liberty requires placing religious organizations on equal footing with their secular counterparts and not treating religious organizations with hostility. [Drummond] would have the board violated both…”
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
This post originally appeared on WND News Center.