Whether the school is ultimately approved or whether its application is finally denied, there is likely to be litigation. In the U.S., charter schools are free, publicly funded schools that have more flexibility in their operations and management than traditional public schools. Oklahoma’s current rules for charter schools state that they must be “nonsectarian” in their “programs, admission policies, employment practices, and all other operations.”
The idea for St. Isidore, which would aim to serve 1,500 students online within Oklahoma by its fifth year of operation, has the backing of Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt as well as former state schools superintendent Ryan Walters. Proponents of the plan say the online school would be a boon for rural Oklahoma students who do not have a Catholic school in their area. If the state’s charter school board approves the school, it would be the first religious school to be funded as a charter.
Farley told CNA that Oklahoma’s “more favorable regulations” for charters compared with other states, as well as recent Supreme Court precedent, puts the backers of the school on “solid legal footing.”
He said their application was crafted, in part, with help from the Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Clinic. He reiterated that he believes Oklahoma’s government as it currently stands presents a “favorable environment to negotiate protections for religious liberty” to ensure that the school’s Catholic identity is not threatened by the acceptance of public funds.
The development of the Oklahoma proposal comes following two U.S. Supreme Court decisions issued in recent years that advocates say could open the door to public funding for religious charter schools. In 2020, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue found that the state’s Blaine Amendment, which prohibited religious schools from participating in a state scholarship program, violated the First Amendment.
And the court’s ruling in Carson v. Makin, issued in June 2022, struck down Maine’s policy barring students in a student-aid program from using their aid to attend “sectarian” schools, ruling that the policy violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment by identifying and excluding “otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.”