On November 8, the Liberty Justice Center filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of an interfaith coalition composed of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, the Religious Freedom Institute’s Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team, and the Abraham Knowledge Academy. The brief urges the Court to review the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision prohibiting religious organizations from operating charter schools in the state.
Shortly after taking office in 2023, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued a legal opinion advising the state’s Virtual Charter School Board to deny charters to faith-based schools. Relying instead on Supreme Court precedent prohibiting discrimination against faith-based organizations, the Virtual Charter School Board issued a charter to St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic School in June 2023. Attorney General Drummond then filed a petition with the Oklahoma Supreme Court asking it to repeal the school’s charter. In June 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board to revoke St. Isidore’s charter.
In connection with his efforts to revoke St. Isidore’s charter, Attorney General Drummond repeatedly demeaned religious minorities, referring to them as “reprehensible and unworthy of public funding.” He particularly singled out Muslims, arguing that St. Isidore’s charter must be denied to avoid a “reckoning” that “will require the State to permit extreme sects of the Muslim faith to establish a taxpayer-funded public charter school teaching Sharia Law.”
The Liberty Justice Center’s amicus brief urges the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case and overturn the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling, arguing that the Attorney General’s comments betray that his efforts to revoke St. Isidore’s charter are motivated by an animus against religious minorities that violates the First Amendment.
“Government officials cannot deny opportunities to citizens because they don’t approve of their religious beliefs,” said Dean McGee, Senior Counsel for Educational Freedom at the Liberty Justice Center. “The Attorney General’s actions also impose on parents’ rights to guide their children’s education. Whether that education is religious or secular, public or private, it should never be threatened by the religious animosity of state officials.”
“Public officials like Attorney General Drummond have a duty to defend their constituents’ constitutional rights—not to attack their beliefs, limit their religious liberty, and infringe on their right to access educational opportunity,” said Howard Slugh, General Counsel for the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty.
“Attorney General Drummond has repeatedly made vile remarks opposing the foundation of a Christian charter school and wrongly claimed that ‘most Oklahomans’ share his personal dislike of the 30,000 Muslims in his state. His remarks deeply misrepresent how Americans view their neighbors,” said Ismail Royer, Director of the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team for the Religious Freedom Institute.
The Liberty Justice Center’s amicus briefs in Drummond v. Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board are available here.