JTA — Oklahoma’s attorney general is accusing a state board of trying to rig the legal fight over a proposed Jewish charter school — a dispute that could open the door for publicly funded religious charter schools across the United States.

Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a motion this week asking an Oklahoma County district judge to intervene after the Statewide Charter School Board rejected an application to open the Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School, a virtual statewide school that would combine secular studies with Jewish religious instruction.

Drummond alleges that the board engineered its vote so the rejection would focus only on the school’s religious character, strengthening the legal case for the school’s supporters, who are preparing a federal lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s ban on religious charter schools.

“A state agency that deliberately hobbles its own legal position is not doing its job — it is betraying Oklahoma taxpayers. I will not allow that,” Drummond said in a statement.

He added: “The Board deliberately suppressed those findings to manufacture a cleaner path to federal court. I will not allow this Board to rig the record at taxpayers’ expense.”

Drummond asked the court to order the board to issue a new rejection letter detailing all of the reasons the proposal was deficient.

The dispute centers on the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, led by former Florida Democratic Rep. Peter Deutsch. The group applied to open a statewide online charter school serving kindergarten through 12th-grade students beginning next school year.

The proposal called for a curriculum combining secular coursework with daily Jewish religious studies. If approved, it would have become the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school.

Jewish groups in Oklahoma have opposed the proposal, saying they prefer not to be thrust into the middle of a debate over church-state separation and that there is little demand for such a school among local Jewish residents.

The charter board voted earlier this week to reject the application, citing a 2024 Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that charter schools must remain secular.

That ruling overturned a previous effort to open a Catholic charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. An appeal to the US Supreme Court ended in a 4–4 tie after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, leaving the state court decision in place.

Several board members said the precedent left them no choice but to reject Ben Gamla’s application.

At the same time, the board has signaled it may support the school’s broader constitutional argument in court. The board hired the conservative Christian legal group First Liberty Institute to represent it in the expected litigation and has indicated it could back the school’s position once a lawsuit is filed.

Drummond, who also fought the Catholic charter school proposal, said the legal question about religious charter schools had already been settled by the state courts and insisted his objection to the board’s vote was procedural rather than religious.

Among the issues he says the board improperly left out was a discrepancy in Ben Gamla’s projected enrollment.

Deutsch initially said the online school would serve about 40 high school students, but the formal application projected enrollment of 400 students across grades K-12.

State officials also raised questions about the composition of the school’s governing board. Oklahoma law requires a charter school board to include a parent or grandparent of a student. Ben Gamla listed Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, as its parent representative.

Supporters of the school have said they plan to challenge Oklahoma’s prohibition on religious charter schools in federal court, arguing that excluding religious schools from charter programs violates the Constitution’s protections for religious freedom.

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separation of religion and state

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