Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond — a Republican — is bucking his own party in a new lawsuit aimed at preventing what would be the first publicly funded religious school in America from opening.
On Friday, Drummond filed the suit in Oklahoma Supreme Court, challenging the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board’s 3-2 decision in June to grant a contract to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School. According to PBS, Drummond warned that the establishment of St. Isidore, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, would lead to the floodgates opening for religious groups of all stripes to make bids for public funding for schools of their own.
“Make no mistake, if the Catholic Church were permitted to have a public virtual charter school, a reckoning will follow in which this state will be faced with the unprecedented quandary of processing requests to directly fund all petitioning sectarian groups,” the lawsuit read.
“It’s way too much work and too expensive” is a pretty standard Republican argument against everything, and not exactly what looks like the core of the problem here. But, I guess he is trying to appeal to other Republicans here, and it’s pretty clear there are some powerful ones who want a lot more church in their state.
The whole “Oklahoma voted 60% against removing the state constitution prohibition on funding churches in 2016” thing seems a lot more compelling to me.