The Ben Gamla Jewish Charter school was handed a major win last week when a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction that prohibits the Statewide Charter School Board from using a 2024 Oklahoma Supreme Court decision to deny its application.
The board will review the court order at its Oct. 12 meeting. It is expected to approve Ben Gamla’s application.
The opposition, who are intervenors, has not confirmed whether it will appeal.
The 2024 court ruling was over the first group to try its hand at state sponsorship - the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School.
Lawyers representing St. Isidore argued then the school’s creation was lawful through the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause. The Oklahoma Supreme Court disagreed.
“What St. Isidore requests from this Court is beyond the fair treatment of a private religious institution in receiving a generally available benefit, implicating the Free Exercise Clause,” the court wrote in its majority opinion. “It is about the State’s creation and funding of the new religious institution violating the Establishment Clause. Even if St. Isidore could assert Free Exercise rights, those rights would not override the legal prohibition under the Establishment Clause.”
The decision went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which tied 4-4, allowing the state ruling to stand.
John Helsley, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, said many of the families committed to St. Isidore lost interest after the court’s decision.
“When the Supreme Court failed to rule on our case, deadlocked 4-4, it caused many of the families who were committed to St. Isidore to lose interest, likely because of the funding they hoped to receive had been taken away,” Helsley said in an email to StateImpact. “So much momentum was lost.”
After its rejection earlier this year, the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation sued the Statewide Charter School Board. In March, it filed a motion for preliminary injunction, seeking to allow the school to still open for the 2027-28 school year while the lawsuit moves through the courts.
Judge David L. Russell wrote in the Sept. 24 decision on the preliminary injunction that the nonsectarian provision the St. Isidore decision relies on violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment because it “expressly discriminates against otherwise eligible recipients solely because of their religious character.”
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