An Oklahoma state school board has approved “the first publicly funded religious school in the nation, despite a warning from the state’s attorney general that the decision was unconstitutional,” ABC News reported on Monday, June 5, 2023 (read story here).
“The Statewide Virtual Charter School Board voted 3-2 to approve the application by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma to establish the St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School” for students in grades K-12 across the state, ABC News said.
The Archdiocese’s application stated the school “participates in the evangelizing mission of the Church and is the privileged environment in which Christian education is carried out.” A church spokesman said, “We are elated that the board agreed with our argument and application for the nation’s first religious charter school.
The U.S. has long had Catholic parochial schools, which are supported by church resources and tuition paid by parents. These schools have to meet state accreditation standards, and aren’t inferior to public schools. But they’re private, because their curriculum includes religious instruction.
Efforts have been made in the past to give parents tax breaks for private-school tuition, and Catholic families who send their children to parochial schools would be major beneficiaries. The Oklahoma venture goes farther by taxing all state residents to pay for Catholic education.
First Amendment groups are promising to sue. If this stands, it means non-Catholics will be forced to pay for Catholic religious education and proselytizing, a clear violation of the First Amendment and Oklahoma’s state constitution. But constitutions, like other laws, aren’t self-enforcing, and there will always be lawbreakers like these state board members. It’s now up to the courts to protect non-Catholic Oklahomans’ constitutional rights.
The Constitution is a social contract, an agreement we have with each other about how to govern ourselves. Twice in our history, a major group has refused to abide by it — in 1861, Confederate slaveowners; today, Republicans, who are increasingly passing laws in defiance of rights like free speech and separation of church and state. Whether those rights survive can’t be taken for granted; that will depend on the willingness of judges to enforce them.