Oklahoma's Top Court Barred a Catholic Charter School. A Federal Judge Cleared the Way for a Jewish One.

Strip the ruling to its principle and it fits in two sentences. The Supreme Court wrote them in 2020: "A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious."

On Thursday, Judge David L. Russell of the Western District of Oklahoma applied that principle to a Jewish school. He granted a preliminary injunction that bars the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board from excluding the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation from the state's charter program because it is religious. Oklahoma law requires every charter school to be nonsectarian. Russell wrote that the requirement "expressly discriminates against otherwise eligible recipients solely because of their religious character," and so violates the Free Exercise Clause.

Two years ago the same requirement sank a Catholic school. In 2024 the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down the board's approval of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The U.S. Supreme Court took the appeal, Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, and the remaining eight split four to four, which left the state ruling standing.

So the Catholic school lost, and the Jewish school, for now, has won. The part that will not fit on a yard sign is who has been fighting hardest to stop it.

What a charter school is

In Oklahoma a charter school is a public school by law, and it runs on state money. It is also, typically, run by a private operator under a contract. The case turns on which fact controls. If a charter school is the government, the Establishment Clause forbids it to teach a faith, and no religious school can be one. If it is a private body taking part in a public program, the Free Exercise Clause forbids the state to shut it out for being religious.

The families, teachers and clergy who intervened to defend the ban argued the first. Russell sided with the second. The Christian Post's account of the order quotes him writing that "simply labeling something as 'public' does not necessarily mean that it is created, operated, or controlled by the government."

The precedent

Russell wrote that "a long line of Supreme Court precedent" supports the school. The line runs through Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue in 2020, quoted above, and Carson v. Makin in 2022, which he cited, where the Court sided with Christian families against a Maine tuition program that excluded religious schools. Russell read Oklahoma's program the same way: having opened charters to all comers, the state, in the passage KOKH quoted, "cannot, pursuant to the Free Exercise Clause, single out religious schools for exclusion solely because of their religious character."

The fair point on the other side

The people on the other side are not cranks. A charter school in Oklahoma is paid for by every taxpayer. The intervenors' lawyers, among them Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the ACLU, warn that Ben Gamla "will discriminate against families that don't share the school's beliefs." Some of the sharpest objections have come from Oklahoma's own Jewish community. Members told StateImpact Oklahoma in May that no one had consulted them and that they were "deeply concerned" about the separation of church and state.

Whether a school that takes every taxpayer's money may teach one faith is a real question. The Supreme Court has not answered it.

The turn nobody expected

The state did not defend its own law. The board, the named defendant, argued for Ben Gamla; its chair, Brian Shellem, has said the St. Isidore decision tied the board's hands. The board's lawyer, Hiram Sasser, expects the loser to appeal to the Tenth Circuit, "probably all the way up until we break the 4-4 tie at the Supreme Court."

What the ruling did not do

It did not open a school. It is a preliminary injunction, and the lawsuit goes on. It does not say Oklahoma must fund religious schools, only that a program open to all may not close its door to one kind of applicant. KOKH quotes the judge saying the opinion "does not express a judgment on the wisdom" of the state opening its coffers to charter schools at all. And it did not break the tie. Only the Supreme Court can do that, and nobody yet knows whether Justice Barrett, who stepped aside from the Catholic case, would sit for this one.

Who the rule protects

A Jewish school, doubted by some of Oklahoma's own Jews, winning on a precedent that Christian families won in Maine. That is what religious liberty looks like when it is working.

If you cheered for St. Isidore, this is your principle, and it now shields a Jewish school. If it holds, it will shield a Muslim academy and a school whose theology you find alarming. That is not a flaw in the rule. It is the rule. A state may decline to fund private schools at all. It may not fund every school except the one that prays.

Read the order; it is linked below. The next time someone calls this case a Christian win, ask which Christians are in it. And if you would not defend the same result for a faith you think is wrong, do not claim it for your own.

This piece is free. Send it to the friend who will argue with you about it.

Sources

Reuters (Nate Raymond), "Oklahoma must allow taxpayer-funded religious charter school, judge rules," September 24, 2026, via KELO
KOKH FOX 25 (Kimberly Querry-Thompson), "Federal judge blocks Oklahoma from enforcing ban on religious charter school plan," September 24, 2026
KGOU / StateImpact Oklahoma (Beth Wallis), "Oklahoma Jewish Charter school secures win in federal court," September 24, 2026
The Christian Post (Michael Gryboski), "Federal judge rules Oklahoma can't ban Jewish charter school over religion," September 24, 2026
Order granting preliminary injunction, Ben Gamla v. Shellem (W.D. Okla., September 24, 2026), as posted by Becket (primary)
Oklahoma Voice (Nuria Martinez-Keel), "Legal battle over Jewish charter school begins in Oklahoma City federal court," August 5, 2026
KGOU / StateImpact Oklahoma, "Another battle is brewing over public funds for religious schools. Oklahoma Jewish leaders are uneasy," May 7, 2026
Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), via Justia (primary)