Posted by:
anybody
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Date: August 01, 2023 11:57AM
If you want to have a privately funded religious school, no one is stopping you -- but not a state-funded religious school.
This situtation looks like a setup to get a case in front of a far-right Catholic majority Supreme Court.
Another example of "religious liberty" actually being used for religious dominionism.
https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/first-legal-challenge-to-state-sanctioned-catholic-charter-school-filed-in-oklahoma/article_64b08288-2c14-11ee-9a51-2fdf61054a10.htmlA group of Oklahoma taxpayers has filed the first legal challenge aimed at blocking the state’s move to open the first religious charter school in the U.S.
The Oklahoma Parent Legislative Action Committee, a nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization, and nine additional plaintiffs — faith leaders, public school parents and public education advocates from across the state — filed litigation Monday morning in Oklahoma County District Court.
They are represented by in-state counsel, as well as attorneys with Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a national religious freedom advocacy organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Education Law Center and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
“Church-state separation is under attack like we haven’t seen in this country in decades,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United and an attorney herself, told the Tulsa World. “It’s time for people to wake up to the connection between church-state separation and all of the rights and freedoms they value in their daily lives — and to fight for it like their lives and our democracy depend on it, because they do.”
Defendants are St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School, a proposed private Catholic online school; the state governing board that recently voted to give it state sanctioning and public education funds, the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, and its five members in their official capacity; the Oklahoma State Department of Education; and State Superintendent Ryan Walters, in his official capacity.
The lawsuit seeks to halt the state from entering into a sponsorship contract with St. Isidore, to block St. Isidore from operating as a charter school and to prohibit any state aid or other state funding from going to St. Isidore.
“It was a no-brainer that we would bring a lawsuit, because religious public schools are as clear a violation of religious freedom as we can think of,” Laser said. “Forcing taxpayers to fund a religion that is not their own is what Thomas Jefferson called ‘sinful and tyrannical.’ This case is about whether this country will allow Christian Nationalists to take over our schools and whether we will allow public education to transform in a way that will leave this country unrecognizable.”
Lastly, the plaintiffs claim that the school’s intention to teach a religious curriculum, including church theology, violates the state constitution and the Oklahoma Charter Schools Act.
The Rev. Lori Walke, senior minister of Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, told the Tulsa World she sought to become a plaintiff in the case because she believes that clergy “must stand up for the separation of church and state.”
“It protects our right to practice our own religion, and it protects our right to not practice someone else’s religion. That’s the bottom line for me in this case,” she said. “While Oklahomans are deeply religious, spiritual people, they also value independence, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience.
“This is part of a larger movement where a small group is trying to rewrite the history of the United States and make us something we are not. This is a place of religious freedom. It’s a place where we prioritize letting people practice their faith or no faith without government interference.”