AFT’s Weingarten on Supreme Court Religious Charter School Case

WASHINGTON-AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond and St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond. The two Oklahoma cases could undercut the separation of church and state and the funding of public schools by forcing states for the first time to fund religious public charter schools with taxpayer money.

"We respect religious education and the founders' intention in separating church and state. Public schools, including public charter schools, are funded by taxpayer dollars because they are dedicated to helping all-not just some-children have a shot at success. They are the bedrock of our democracy, and states have long worked to ensure that they remain secular, open and accessible to all. They are not, and never have been, Sunday Schools.

"The petitioners are seeking to change that. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson rightly noted, the state is challenging their charter application not because of religious discrimination but because what they are trying to establish is simply not, in any reasonable sense, a public school.

"That is clear in so many ways, from the school's teaching of religion as fact to the seeking of religious exemptions from discrimination laws.

"Religious schools should be able to operate in the U.S., but they are not public schools, and they shouldn't be able to get the benefits and the funding yet ignore the obligations and responsibilities.

"Our hope is that the justices will uphold the Supreme Court of Oklahoma's decision, correctly siding with religious pluralism over sectarianism.

"A reversal would be a devastating blow to public education and the 90 percent of young people who rely on it. We must preserve and nurture the roots of our democracy, not tear up its very foundations."

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The AFT represents 1.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.