In May of this year, the Supreme Court ended the hope that an Oklahoma Catholic charter school would be first in the nation to shatter the wall between religion and public schools. Now two schools are poised to challenge the notion that a public charter school must be non-sectarian.
The Previous Challenge
In 2023, Oklahoma’s charter school board approved St. Isidore, a Catholic cyber charter that would have been the nation’s first explicitly religious charter school. Objections came, and not just from liberals.
Nina Rees, at the time the President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, disagreed with the decision. Arguing that charter schools are meant to be public schools and therefor “must be non-sectarian.” Rees said, “The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City is trying to make charter schools into something they are not.”
Also vocal in opposition was GOP Attorney General Gentner Drummond. Oklahomans, he argued, would soon find themselves forced to fund charters that promoted religions to which they objected. That concern has been echoed in other states such as Florida, where conservative leaders are complaining that taxpayer-funded school vouchers are being used to fund Islamic schools.
Drummond took his complaint to the state supreme court, which ruled that the charter school was a public school and, as such, must be non-sectarian. St. Isidore supporters appealed the decision, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. But Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, presumably because a close friend at the Law School at Notre Dame was working on the case for the two Catholic dioceses involved.
The Supreme Court tied 4-4, leaving the state supreme court decision in place. But it seemed safe to assume that supporters of religious public charters would find another opportunity to bring their argument before the court. They may soon have two such opportunities.
Oklahoma, Again
On November 3, Peter Deutsch submitted a letter of intent to apply for charter authorization to the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board (the same board that previously approved St. Isidore), as reported by Nuria Martinez-Keel at Oklahoma Voice.
Deutsch, a representative of the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, previously founded a chain of Ben Gamla non-religious Hebrew-English charter schools in Florida. The proposed school would be their first school outside of Florida.
Asaf Elia-Shalev at The Detroit Jewish News reports that “local Jewish leaders say they were blindsided by the proposal and argue that such a school isn’t needed.” But approval does not appear to be the real goal here. Elia-Shalev spoke to Eric Baxter, vice-president and general counsel at Becket, a leading religious-liberty law firm that is representing Ben Gamla, who said “we would represent Ben Gamla challenging that decision in the federal courts in Oklahoma.” Becket boasts an “unparalleled, undefeated record” at the Supreme Court; Baxter himself worked on the recent Mahmoud v. Taylor decision allowing parents to opt out of any instruction they objected to on religious grounds.
Ben Gamla schools are actually run by Academica, a Florida for-profit charter management organization that provides “facilities, finance, staffing and human resource coordination, as well as bookkeeping, budgeting, regulatory compliance and financial forecasting.”
According to the letter of intent, the proposed school would provide “Oklahoma’s state-approved academic standards alongside Jewish religious studies, enabling students to achieve college readiness while developing deep Jewish knowledge, faith, and values within a supportive learning community.” According to KFOR, the school intends to open in August 2027.
As Ben Gamla is proposing almost exactly what St. Isidore offered, it seems very likely that the Oklahoma supreme court would rule against them, thereby setting up a federal challenge.
Colorado
Riverstone Academy opened in Pueblo, Colorado in August of this year, promising K-5 students “strong academics with classical values, hands-on trade-based learning, and a Christian foundation.” It has been billed by its authorizer as the “first public Christian school.” And while some comments on its Facebook page charge it hid its faith-based emphasis to sneak past state authorities, reporting by Ann Schimke at Chalkbeat suggests that Riverstone was created in order to challenge the school-church wall.
In June 2025, Pueblo County School District 70 attorney Brad Miller wrote to the district’s school board and superintendent looking for permission for a “public education cooperative” to open a school. Reports Schimke:
Miller wrote that the cooperative would then work with Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based group involved in high-profile conservative legal causes, to test “the legalities around the issue of whether a public school may provide religious education.”
Miller further explained that ADF had hosted him for oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the St. Isidore case. When that case ended in a tie, Miller wrote, “ADF asked me if I could find a way for a parallel case to be initiated out of Colorado.”
ADF is a high-powered conservative Christian legal advocacy group boasting 16 Supreme Court victories.
The school opened in just three months, a very short timeline for launching a school. In October, the Colorado Department of Education warned Riverstone that, because it appeared that Riverstone was “not operating in a nonsectarian nature,” they might not be eligible for state funding.
Schimke has done further reporting showing that Riverstone “has racked up more than a dozen zoning, building, and health code violations since opening.” These included opening the school in a zoning district where schools are not allowed, as well as improperly stored chemicals and the lack of a fully functioning fire alarm system. It remains to be seen in Riverstone is in place to become a test case for religious public schools.
Bonus
Meanwhile, also in Colorado, Schimke reports that Becket is arguing that Catholic preschools participating in Colorado’s state-funded preschool program should be allowed to deny admission to LGBTQ children or children from LGBTQ families. Requiring them to accept such students in order to receive taxpayer funding would, they argue, interfere with their religious beliefs. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the schools’ right to discriminate. The case has been appealed to the Supreme Court.
The wall between church and state will once again be challenged where it runs past schools. It will be story to watch, again, in 2026.