A Federal Judge Opens the Door to America's First Religious Charter School

A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Thursday that the state cannot turn away a charter school for the sole reason that it is religious, handing a Jewish school foundation the first round in a fight that is built to reach the Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge David Russell granted a preliminary injunction to the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, which sued members of the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board after its application was denied earlier this year. The injunction stops the state from enforcing the part of its Charter Schools Act that requires charter schools to be nonsectarian.

What the judge found

Russell's reasoning rests on the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. In his opinion he wrote that because the nonsectarian provision "expressly discriminates against otherwise eligible recipients solely because of their religious character, it violates the Free Exercise Clause." That is the standard the Supreme Court has applied in cases such as Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza and Carson v. Makin, where it held that a state that offers a public benefit cannot exclude otherwise qualified applicants because they are religious.

The judge was careful about the limits of his order. He wrote that it "does not express a judgment on the wisdom" of Oklahoma opening its funds to charter schools of different philosophical or educational persuasions. The ruling also does not approve the school or allow it to open. It only bars the board from treating religious character as a disqualifier while the case goes on.

The case behind the case

The ruling lands on top of an earlier, unfinished fight. In 2024 the Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked St. Isidore of Seville, a proposed Catholic virtual charter school. The U.S. Supreme Court took the case and, in 2025, split 4-4, which left the state court's decision standing without setting a national rule. A tie settles nothing outside Oklahoma. The Ben Gamla case gives the justices a second chance, this time on a federal court's finding that the exclusion is unconstitutional.

Peter Deutsch, the foundation's founder, said in a statement reported by Oklahoma outlets: "The state cannot single out religious schools for exclusion while welcoming everyone else into the charter school program." Opponents answered that forcing taxpayers to fund religious public schools violates the separation of church and state. That is the argument the next court will have to weigh against the free exercise line of cases.

What happens next

A preliminary injunction is temporary. The lawsuit continues in district court, and whichever side loses at the end can appeal to the Tenth Circuit and then ask the Supreme Court to hear it. For parents, nothing changes this week: there is no Jewish charter school open in Oklahoma, and no other state has yet approved one of any faith. What changed is the direction of the legal wind, and the likelihood that the question the justices left open in 2025 comes back to them.