Are religious charter schools constitutional? After deadlocked SCOTUS decision, another Oklahoma case is trying to find out
A federal judge, David L. Russell, ruled on Sept. 24, 2026, that Ben Gamla, a Florida-based Jewish charter school organization, can proceed with a lawsuit after Oklahoma denied its application to open a charter school offering both secular and religious education. The ruling comes roughly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 on a similar case involving a proposed Catholic charter school, St. Isidore of Seville, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused without stated reason, leaving in place lower court rulings that blocked that school under Oklahoma law and the First Amendment.
The legal scholar behind this account traces how three Supreme Court rulings — Trinity Lutheran in 2017, Espinoza in 2020, and Carson v. Makin in 2022 — steadily expanded what public aid religious institutions can receive, on free-exercise grounds. Unlike the St. Isidore case, which Oklahoma's own supreme court decided under the state constitution's stricter ban on aid to religious institutions, the Ben Gamla case rests on federal case law, which the analysis suggests gives it a better shot at reaching the U.S. Supreme Court with a different outcome.
Oklahoma has 30 days to appeal the ruling to the 10th Circuit.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.