By Jennifer Hawks
This week, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship appeared in the U.S. Supreme Court docket search for the first time. We joined a BJC (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty) brief that promotes religious freedom and safeguards public education. Typically, CBF is only indirectly involved in friend-of-the-court briefs in religious freedom cases as a member body of BJC. CBF and CBF Oklahoma wanted to stand with BJC and eight additional Christian and Jewish partners in this case at the intersection of religious freedom and public education.
Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Genter Drummond, Attorney General of Oklahoma is an attempt to further erode the wall separating the institutions of religion and government by permitting religious charter schools. Charter schools are public schools not private schools. They may get more operational flexibility than traditional public schools but are still accountable to the state. They cannot charge tuition and cannot be a religious institution. Some in Oklahoma are seeking to eliminate this constitutional parameter.
The state attorney general counseled the board that giving a charter to a religious school violated the state constitution. When the board failed to heed this advice and proceeded with their plans to award the nation’s first charter for a religious school, his office sued and won. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a religious charter school violates both the state and federal constitutions. Our brief asks the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold this decision of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Comparing a religious charter school to vouchers for a private religious school is comparing apples to oranges. Whether or not tax dollars end up in the coffers of private religious schools is dependent on parents. Parents apply for vouchers and then must find a school willing to educate their children. Schools receive vouchers only after they accept the students. A religious charter school flips the script as the government is first choosing to fund a religious school and then hoping parents want to send their children.
A hypothetical may be helpful. Imagine a state with a $5 million budget for charter schools. An Amish, Baptist, Buddhist, Catholic, Church of Christ, Islamic, Hindu, Jewish, Mennonite, and Seventh-day Adventist school each apply for $1 million contracts to operate schools to educate and evangelize, to teach four “R’s” (reading, ‘riting, ‘rthimetic, and religion). The state would decide five of these religious groups are worthy to be funded and five are not. After the charters are awarded, parents may or may not choose to send their children to one of the five schools the government chose to fund.
Private religious schools can use religion to reject students, choose curriculum, and make employment decisions. Many are also exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act and so do not have to have elevators, ramps or other facility accommodations for students, staff or family members with disabilities. Religious charter schools would expect this same independence even though the decision to fund them is made exclusively by the state.
CBF and CBF Oklahoma support religious freedom and public education. In the American religious landscape, Baptists moved from being a persecuted religious minority to the largest Protestant denomination because we had the freedom to practice our faith without fear or favor from the government. It’s a history worth fighting for.
Rev. Jennifer Hawks is Director of Advocacy for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Connect with her at jhawks@cbf.net.