Oklahoma sued for funding US's first 'state-sponsored' religious charter school

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Sun 13 Aug 2023 05.00 EDT

The American Civil Liberties Union and a handful of civil organizations have filed a lawsuit to stop the Oklahoma state government from funding the US’s first religious public charter school, in turn setting up a fierce debate surrounding religious liberties.

On Monday, the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Education Law Center and Freedom From Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of nearly a dozen plaintiffs including parents, education activists and faith leaders seeking to stop Oklahoma from sponsoring and funding St Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School.

The lawsuit, which names the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, the state education department, the state superintendent of public instruction and St Isidore as defendants, argues that the SVCSB violated the state constitution, the Oklahoma Charter Schools Act, and the board’s own regulations when it voted 3-2 in June to approve St Isidore’s charter-school sponsorship application.

Charter schools in the US are publicly funded but independently run. If opened next year, St Isidore will join two dozen charter schools in Oklahoma. According to the lawsuit, St Isidore refused to agree to comply with legal requirements applicable to state charter schools, including prohibitions against discrimination. It states that St Isidore will in fact “discriminate in admissions, discipline, and employment based on religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other protected characteristics”.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/13/oklahoma-lawsuit-religious-public-charter-school

[AZLD4Candidate]

1. Oklahoma. . .mini Texas with an even dumber governor.

[KPN]

2. Thank you ACLU.

[Lonestarblue]

3. The Christian Nationalists are well funded and they are making progress faster than I ever thought.

If Oklahoma succeeds here, other red states will not the far behind, and most of public education will be turned into teaching kids their beliefs and little else.

Months ago, the NYT published an article about right-wing Hasidic schools in New York—where boys and girls are forced to attend separate schools. A study found that the boys were basically illiterate with the girls scoring only slightly better on state tests. The state gives them millions of dollars for this lack of education, and I have to wonder why. They are indoctrinating children, not educating them.

The SC ruled that taxpayers in Maine must pay for students to attend an evangelical school that rejects LGBTQ+ as students, as teachers, or even as children of same-sex parents.

Two oil billionaires in Texas are using their money to try to force the closure of all public schools, with taxpayers then funding Christian schools that teach the Bible.

Florida has gone off the deep end approving a curriculum published by PragerU, which is nothing more than distorted history and right-wing Christian evangelism rolled up as education.

I’m sure there are many other examples of public funding of evangelical education. As Hitler knew, the way to grow up a populace that supported your beliefs was to deny them a true education and indoctrinate them with lies.

And in Israel, the right-wing Hasidic Jews who rose to power in the last election, are preventing women from getting on trains with them and insisting that they must go to a car in the back of the train where there are no men. They are insisting on women being totally separated from men in education and in public.

The same plan has been going on here for decades, and it is having success. I doubt this Supreme Religious Court would overturn the Oklahoma law. We all know that right-wing religion has no place in our government, but it is well funded by people like Leonard Leo who have many billions to push their perverted views into secular law.

[Freethinker65]

4. So if legalized discrimination in public schools is granted,

SCOTUS is essentially saying no groups are protected from public discrimination in our country; not even separate but equal nonsense will be required.

[melm00se]

5. The key is to ensure that

the suit isn't based upon the fact that they are a religious organization. They must stick to the failure to meet certain objective requirements and get as far away from even the appearance that this is being done because it is religious school.

The recent Carson v. Makin case was decided for Carson because the state withheld financial funding because the school was religious. Discrimination cuts both ways: the state cannot discriminate in favor of one religion but also cannot discriminate because they are religious.

[Timeflyer]

6. Florida's GOP mob replaced vouchers with "education savings accounts"(ESA) to use tax dollars

to fund tuition for private religious schools. HB 1 made $8,600 dollars available to all state students, regardless of family income, to be used for private school tuition, homeschooling, basically anything that can called education. There are practically no regulations for private schools or homeschooling. Some use biblically-based curriculum that says the earth is 6000 yrs. old and humans and dinosaurs coexisted. On the tax-payers dime.

Florida's weird. And stupid.

[PortTack]

7. A good start! Kudos to ACLU and others bringing this suit!

[republianmushroom]

8. Thank you American Civil Liberties Union

[ArkansasDemocrat1]

9. If this kinda shit wins

and I were an Oklahoma home owner, I would sue seeking relief on my property's school taxes since I don't belong to the religion promoted at that school. Sounds like a class action suit could be handy.