Lawsuit Against Public Religious Charter School Continues With 1 Claim Dismissed

A lawsuit against the first ever publicly funded religious charter school is moving forward.

After about three hours of discussion between the four parties involved, the judge squashed the argument that the Charter School Act was violated when St. Isidore was approved. However, the judge is allowing the case to move forward with a handful of arguments.

“We’re happy that the judge saw that claim one was defective and we’re looking forward to the opportunity to show that the rest of the claims that the plaintiffs are bringing don’t have merit,” Philip Sechler, Counsel for Virtual Charter School Board, said. 

The case is Americans United for Separation of Church and State versus the Oklahoma State Department of Education, the Virtual Charter School Board, and St. Isidore.

“St. Isidore wants to create a religious public school. That’s never existed in the history of the US. It would be un-American and would fundamentally change and harm our public education system,” Alex Luchenitser with Americans United for Separation of Church and State said.

Luchenitser argues that St. Isidore will discriminate, indoctrinate, and is a misuse of taxpayer funds. 

“The school is not appropriate for all students, so it shouldn’t get public funds,” Luchenitser said. “It should be a private school. It should not try to be a public school.”

The other sides of the courtroom argue St. Isidore will be inclusive to all students and staff, even though it’s a religious based institution.

They also argue that the outside group bringing the suit lacks standing and cause of action.

“Hoping that the other three claims suffer the same fate as the first claim,” Hiram Sasser, Counsel for the OSDE, said.

“Certainly the Oklahoma Supreme Court has the ultimate authority to decide many of these issues and I suspect that opinion will have a lot of relevance on this case. We’ll have to see when that comes down and how far along we are in this case,” Sasser said.

The next hearing is set for July 24th at 9 a.m.