AFT-Oklahoma and AFT on Oklahoma Supreme Court Decision Blocking Publicly Funded Religious Charter School

OKLAHOMA CITY—AFT-Oklahoma President Mary Best and AFT President Randi Weingarten issued a joint statement after the Supreme Court of Oklahoma rejected the establishment of a virtual religious charter school funded with state money:

“This decision is a crucial victory for religious liberty, pluralism and freedom over the forces of extremism and sectarianism. One of the clearest foundations of American democracy is the freedom to practice, or not to practice, religion. The framers never intended to require public funding of religious institutions or schools, and, in fact, religious freedom itself is reliant on the distinction. Liberty ends when someone is compelled to support another’s private beliefs, and if the attorney general had lost, Oklahoma would have been forced to siphon millions of dollars from public schools into private hands.

“The combination of the Constitution’s free exercise clause and the concept of separation of church and state underpins our democracy, and this decision preserves that distinction. This case should never have had to be brought in the first place; a charter school for religious purposes paid for by public money should have been rejected as unconstitutional from the start. If this school is kept alive through appeals, it will continue to present an existential threat to the great state of Oklahoma and to the United States writ large.”