Oklahoma AG sues to stop publicly funded religious school: 'Unthinkable waste of our tax dollars'

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond — a Republican — is bucking his own party in a new lawsuit aimed at preventing what would be the first publicly funded religious school in America from opening.

On Friday, Drummond filed the suit in Oklahoma Supreme Court, challenging the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board's 3-2 decision in June to grant a contract to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School. According to PBS, Drummond warned that the establishment of St. Isidore, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, would lead to the floodgates opening for religious groups of all stripes to make bids for public funding for schools of their own.

"Make no mistake, if the Catholic Church were permitted to have a public virtual charter school, a reckoning will follow in which this state will be faced with the unprecedented quandary of processing requests to directly fund all petitioning sectarian groups," the lawsuit read.

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The Archdiocese made it clear in its petition before the board that its school would be openly Christian in nature, stating in the application documents that St. Isidore "participates in the evangelizing mission of the Church and is the privileged environment in which Christian education is carried out."

Allowing an openly religious school to receive public funds is not only a violation of both the US Constitution and Oklahoma's constitution, but also of the will of Oklahoma's voters. In 2016, 57% of Oklahomans voted down Question 790, which would have stripped the state's constitution of language preventing state institutions from being used for the benefit of any church or system of religion.

AG Drummond blasted both the notion of the state endorsing a specific religion and of Oklahoma taxpayers paying to advance the cause of a specific church.

"Not only is this an irreparable violation of our individual religious liberty, but it is an unthinkable waste of our tax dollars," Drummond stated.

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Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt — himself a Republican who endorsed then-incumbent Attorney General John O'Connor in Oklahoma's 2022 Republican primary — reportedly dismissed Drummond's lawsuit as a "political stunt."

"AG Drummond seems to lack any firm grasp on the constitutional principle of religious freedom and masks his disdain for the Catholics’ pursuit by obsessing over non-existent schools that don’t neatly align with his religious preference," Stitt said.