Brad speaks to Rachel Laser, President and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They discuss AU's lawsuit with the ACLU and FFRF in the case of the state of Oklahoma agreeing to send taxpayer funds to a Catholic school. This is, in essence, an attempt to make Christian schools into public schools.
From AU: And public schools must be secular and open to all students. They are not allowed to discriminate against students or indoctrinate children into one religion.
But that is exactly what Oklahoma’s newly approved religious public charter school, St. Isidore of Seville, intends to do.
Approved by the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board in June 2023, St. Isidore would be a public school—entirely funded by the taxpayers of Oklahoma—even though St. Isidore makes clear in its charter school application that it intends to run the school “as a Catholic school” and a “place of evangelization.”
That’s why Americans United along with the ACLU, Freedom from Religion Foundation and Education Law Center is suing.
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Axis Mundi You're listening to an irreverent podcast.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our guest today is a return guest, someone who I had the privilege of meeting in D.C.
a couple of months ago and interviewing, and I get to interview again, and that is Rachel Lazar.
So, Rachel, thanks for being here.
Thanks so much for having me on again.
I'm a huge fan.
So a lot of people are going to know this, but you are the president and CEO at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
We here at Straight White American Jesus have the privilege of making a really cool set of podcast interviews with Americans United, and everyone should check that out.
It's called One Nation, All Beliefs.
You are a lawyer, an advocate, and a strategist.
You have been working on issues related to so many things, including separation of church and state for decades now.
And today we're here to talk about something that's actually really, really, really important, really close to the heart of this show, and I think really something a lot of folks around the country are going to want to know about.
And that is the fact that in June, Oklahoma's statewide virtual charter public school board Which is a mouthful.
Oklahoma's statewide virtual charter school board voted to approve the nation's first religious public charter school.
So this is on the face of it, like the most unconstitutional thing I've ever heard of.
Some folks probably read your great op-ed in The New York Times about this.
Others may have seen some other reporting.
But would you mind just starting us off?
What are the details about this case in Oklahoma and a religiously funded and inspired public school?
Absolutely.
It's pretty straightforward, actually, even though it's hard to believe as I describe it again.
But the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa applied together to become a charter public school at taxpayer full expense.
Um, with the intent of teaching religion.
So, and let me add, Bradley, we can talk about this more, with the intent not just to indoctrinate, but also to discriminate.
And the virtual charter school board granted their application.
So as of now, come the next school year, not this one, the virtual Charter School of St.
Isidore of Seville, a Catholic school that is fully Catholic, and we can again talk about the details, is going to be a fully and directly funded by taxpayers public school in Oklahoma.
Unprecedented!
Throughout the nation.
So I am just a person in Oklahoma.
I pay my state taxes every year.
And lo and behold, part of the state budget is to send money to a school that is Catholic in its ethos, Catholic in its outlook and its curriculum and its rules and policies.
And somehow that is supposed to be, quote unquote, a public school.
I want to just hover on this idea.
You said fully Catholic.
Friends, if you're listening, you might know there are universities out there Like I used to teach at Rhodes College in Memphis.
Rhodes College, if you go there today, it has no religious affiliation or teaching.
There's no chapel service.
There's no any of that.
However, it once was a kind of Presbyterian school.
So you might see some vestiges of the like religious ethos, but You know, when you go to Rhodes College now, there is no, like, religion test.
There's no Catholic this or that.
There's no president.
But you're saying that's not true here.
You're saying if I go to this school, it's going to feel like super, super Catholic?
Super, super Catholic.
And if you go to the website, you can Google the website of C Isidore's, you will see that they ironically say that they welcome, quote, students of all faiths or no faith.
But then they follow that up.
And here's the catch with students must, quote, appreciate and desire a robust Catholic education.
And students and families must have a, quote, willingness to adhere with respect to the beliefs, expectations, policies, and procedures of the school.
And let me tell you about those policies and procedures.
St.
Isidore said that it will operate, quote, in harmony with faith and morals, including sexual morality, as taught and understood by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, based upon Holy Scripture and sacred tradition.
I don't know about to you, Bradley, but to me, that's a pretty clear description of a Catholic school, not a public one.
So this is a school that if I am openly gay, that's going to be an issue.
If I'm somebody who's like, hey, I'm happy to go to economics class and language arts class, but I'm not going to go to the religious instruction.
That's a problem.
I'm not.
They're going to discipline me.
They're going to say either, you know, either do this or get out, probably.
Absolutely.
And it's not just for students.
It's their families.
If their families aren't in line with the Catholic teachings of the school.
And it's also teachers and staff.
At the school.
All of the abocs.
All funded with taxpayer dollars.
Directly.
Directly, Bradley.
And I just want to make one point about that because it's true.
Some people have a lot of people actually have asked me, but what about these recent Supreme Court cases?
And what about these private school vouchers?
Like, hasn't that already been allowed public money to go to private religious schools?
And here's the answer.
To a certain extent, yes.
And that is a really big problem for public schools across America because the Supreme Court bought into this fiction that basically that indirect funding through parents as like a medium to private religious schools is not government funding, even though the government is giving the money to the families who are giving the money to the private religious schools.
And here's the thing.
The court has even increasingly strengthened the argument for funding private religious education through private school vouchers.
And that's a really big problem in and of itself.
It means we shouldn't be having any private school vouchers for any private schools.
But this is different.
This is different because this is Government funding directly and entirely for a public school.
This isn't a private school.
This is a, I just want to be really clear, this is a public school because by virtue of the law in Oklahoma, charter schools are public schools, period.
So it's not even one of these, what I would call, sleight of hand situations where the state government's like, hey, parents, here's five grand, here's 10 grand, use that for what you want.
You want to spend that at this school or that school?
Go ahead.
This is just like, actually, we as a state are going to give money to a Catholic school and just say, yeah, that's just one of the options for our citizens to attend.
This is, yeah, anyway, I have so many questions.
So here's just, I want to know what Americans United is doing about it, because that's a big part of this story.
How does this violate the Oklahoma state constitution?
This is not constitutional.
And so I'm just wondering how this is kind of like something that seems egregiously against what the state founding document says.
It is.
So for one, it violates the charter school law in the state.
So that's one thing.
But it also violates the Constitution because the Constitution says that public schools have to be open to all.
And the Constitution also says that public schools cannot be relitous.
It's that clear.
And the charter school law also says that charter schools are public schools that have to be non-sectarian.
So this is reinforced all over the place in Oklahoma law, which is why we did just to answer that other question, Bradley, we did file a lawsuit.
We filed it in Oklahoma state court under Oklahoma state law, constitutional and charter school law.
And we filed it with some wonderful friends of ours, the ACLU.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Education Law Center.
So those are our allies.
We filed the lawsuit.
I don't know if this is the place to tell you about it a little bit, but on behalf of the most remarkable group of plaintiffs, would this be an appropriate place?
Of course.
Tell us all about it.
And I think one of the reasons I love that is because I want people listening to have a face and a life and a character to sort of understand like, hey, if I'm this family in Oklahoma, And I live in this district and my options are limited to these schools and I have to send my kid perhaps to what is essentially the public school up the road that is actually Catholic.
Here's what my life looks like.
Here's what our decision making as a family looks like.
Here's what our choices are narrowed down to.
So please, by all means, tell us about the folks, the plaintiffs.
Yeah, and I think what's so cool about the breadth of the plaintiffs is it shows the breadth of people who are in jeopardy when church-state separation is undermined.
So there are education, public education advocates.
Like, you know, the Oklahoma Parents Legislative Action Committee that are dedicated to preserving public education in the state.
They're actually, they were our lead plaintiffs in the case.
The founder and leader of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition and a member of the Noble Public Schools Board of Education.
So we've got these amazing public school advocates who are really concerned about public education.
About what happens when the dollars that they already need so desperately.
Oklahoma ranks at the bottom of public education.
They need these dollars to be going to public schools that serve all, not religious schools.
And so we've got these great public education advocates.
And then we've got these amazing parents who are, by the way, Catholic families, which I think is, you know, worth pointing out because some of our opponents try to label us as like anti-Christian or anti-Catholic in this case, but we're not.
These are Catholic families who say this should not be happening, you know, in our state.
And also families who have kids with disabilities because Unbelievably, St.
Isidore and their application also reserve the right to discriminate against students with disabilities.
And that is really something and public schools can't do that.
OK, I mean, I'm not honestly, Bradley, like I am.
I am Jewish, as you know, I am not Christian, but I don't think that's what Jesus would say.
I, so I've been reading up on this, Kate, but I don't, I don't, it never registered to me that that was part of the school's policies, that they reserve the right to refuse folks.
Wow.
On those grounds, on the grounds of ability, disability, et cetera.
That's, I mean, that makes this worse.
I mean, it is bad.
It makes it worse.
Anyways.
Okay.
That was specifically in the application.
And then there are families with LGBTQ kids where the parents are LGBTQ.
And of course, So many of these Christian nationalist efforts that we're witnessing today are so targeting the LGBTQ community.
I just what an exhausting period for the LGBTQ after such radical progress.
And of course, because of that progress, right, to have to witness and experience such a backlash is so brutal.
So so there are these amazing parents who step forward and then there are all these wonderful Christian clergy Who said, like, not a religious freedom belongs to all of us.
One church and state mingle that creates as much danger for the church as it creates for the state.
And one of my one of the the plaintiffs is Lori Waukee.
She's a reverend who's on our faith advisory council.
at Americans United, and she is just such an amazing activist and willing to put herself out there.
Another one is a reverend who actually is also indigenous.
She grew up as a Native American in the Muscogee Creek tribe of eastern Oklahoma, and he talks about how This experience of where he comes from has influenced him because with this sort of forced Christian education with tax dollars for him, it harkens back to Oklahoma's notorious past when thousands of indigenous children were taken from their families and provided a Christian education using taxpayer funding.
So just the most incredible and broad group of plaintiffs.
It is really incredible and it really shows, you know, one of the things we do on the show is we try to talk about the fact that it's easy to characterize states as red or blue states.
Oh, Massachusetts is blue and Oklahoma is red and Tennessee is deep red and California is blue and whatever else.
What I love about these conversations is it really reminds us that there are people on the ground and the breadth, the diversity, the expansiveness of the American community is like on full display in these plaintiffs.
We have Christian people who are saying no to a Catholic.
Like, no, we are Christians who don't think Catholic schools should be, quote unquote, public schools.
We have LGBTQ folks.
We have, as you mentioned, someone who is indigenous and just being reminded of all of the horrors of the past in terms of boarding schools and so many other things.
What do you think happens if this becomes the norm in Oklahoma and across the nation?
It's terrifying.
It genuinely could lead to it's an it's what it is is another huge blow to our democracy.
And the way it's a huge blow to our democracy is that public schools are like a glue in our democracy.
They teach us secular values.
They teach us our country's values that we all share.
And they also teach us how to be together despite our differences.
And even they celebrate our differences, which is so nice.
So they're supposed to.
And, you know, Religious public schools are not only a legal oxymoron, they're an attack on the fundamental values of a religiously pluralistic nation like America.
I will just tell you one personal story.
I have three kids, as you know, and we used the public schools for many, many years.
And when my middle daughter was at public education here in Washington, D.C.
at her school, she came home from school one day in pre-K.
And she had a cute little group of girlfriends, and one of them was from a very devout evangelical family.
You know, which I thought was great, right?
We're all different.
Our kids are all playing.
That's perfect.
And she came home and she said, Mommy, and I won't name the girl's name, but so-and-so said to me that we go up, but Jews go down.
What does that mean?
Um, and I couldn't believe it, but I believed it.
And I just said, you know, honey, this is just what some people are taught and they have misinformation and it's, it's not right.
And honestly, I would just ignore it.
And keep playing with your friend, you know.
She doesn't know any better.
And no, you're not going down.
You're fine, you know.
And she did.
Next day, she went back and played with her friend.
I was so happy, you know, to see it.
But what I thought when this happened in Oklahoma is, Imagine if I, as a Jewish parent, would have had to worry that my daughter would actually be taught that by her teachers.
And when your kids are so captive in the school, so vulnerable and so influenceable by their teachers and authority figures in their school, that would have been a whole different game.
And to be honest, we wouldn't have been able to use the public schools anymore.
So it would also, Bradley, just to go back to your question, create such a group of others and such a group of insiders and like a group of those of us who are true outsiders and who don't belong in the country.
And of course, and you know better than anyone, that just goes back to You know, what Christian nationalists want, and white Christian nationalists, frankly, which is to define true Americans as those who are both white and Christian, and frankly, a certain type of Christian, ultra conservative Christian.
The way you just—I think that vignette is so powerful, because what it reminds everybody is, is what's at stake here is not only the kinds of curriculum and education.
So, hey, if I'm going to go to school, is there a theology class?
Are they going to teach me about the Bible?
Are they going to teach me that, you know, God doesn't want people to be gay?
That is all there, and it's all on the table, and it's all a huge part of the conversation.
But the way you laid it out is also just perhaps even more essential in the sense that if you're going to have public schools that are supposed to be places where we as American citizens are, and not citizens, are educated, where we learn about the values of our society, where we learn to understand the diversity of our communities, and structurally there are second class citizens.
Oh, you're Jewish?
Oh, you're atheist?
Oh, you don't believe the things we believe?
Well, yeah, I mean, sorry, you're going to go home as a four-year-old, a seven-year-old, a 12-year-old thinking, I'm not as good.
I'm not in the inside.
I wish I was like them because they're Catholic and they're actually part of the real Americans or the cool kids or the in-group or whatever it is.
You know, we all know when you're a kid, that's how your mind works.
You want to fit in.
You want to be part of everything.
I think back to my public school, and I did not grow up in a What I would say was an overwhelmingly diverse area, but there was some diversity.
And I can tell you that, like, in first grade, one of my best friends became Leo, and Leo's family had just immigrated from China.
Some of my other friends only spoke Spanish at home.
And, like, to this day, from when I was 6 or 16, those friends, those experiences, their worlds expanded my world.
And it changed how I understood things.
And to this day, that's part of who I am.
All right.
So if this becomes the norm in Oklahoma, it's terrifying.
I guess a meta question would be, is that the goal?
Are they testing this out?
Are they trying to see how far they can get?
Is this a sort of test run for a bigger attack across the country?
Any insight on that front?
That's I mean, absolutely it is.
I think this is part of a broader attack by Christian nationalists on public education.
And it's frankly all about getting government funds to fund their schools and to give themselves privilege in our society.
And, you know, I think that charter schools are sort of the next frontier.
I wrote in my op-ed in The New York Times.
Sorry, I had to reference that.
That was a first for me.
Never apologize for that.
You should have got a shirt made with the op-ed on the shirt and come on this podcast wearing it.
Oh my gosh, that's funny.
But 7% of all public school students in the country attended charter schools as of the fall of 2021.
So what I think, you know, this is is just sort of the latest frontier and Christian nationalists trying to do all they can to divert sort of funds from public education to religious education.
But, you know, we've seen this attack so profoundly through the private school voucher movement and how emboldened it's been through these recent Supreme Court decisions.
from this court in recent years.
So there's already huge efforts to divert public funds to private religious schools.
Of course, let's just go back.
This is a public religious school.
See change for America cannot be allowed to exist.
Radical, really.
But so that's one of the efforts.
And then we've seen these massive attacks on public education and the way that That those have borne out through state legislative action is, unfortunately, schools in Texas being able to replace school certified school counselors with chaplains.
Like, that's really something.
Remember, Texas almost passed this law that would place the Ten Commandments in every single public school classroom.
In Idaho and Kentucky, they passed a law that, and one of them, the Idaho one, I believe it's called the Coach Kennedy Law, after the Kennedy case that we lost, unfortunately, that would allow teachers and coaches to pray in front of their students, which has just forever been thought of as a violation of the Constitution in our country.
West Virginia came this close to passing a bill that would have allowed the schools to teach intelligent design creationism.
Creationism, like we got rid of that a long time ago.
And then, of course, we've all been reading about these efforts to ban and censor books across the country and to shape these lessons and to scrub them, to scrub like, like Superintendent Ryan Walters wants to do in Oklahoma, to scrub the Tulsa race massacre of anything to do with race.
to take away the right to teach about critical race theory in Florida or race or even girls menstruation.
I mean, it's just in every and all these attacks so featured again on the LGBTQ community.
So the conglomerate of what I'm laying out is this really scary picture of kind of like all of these holes that Christian nationalists are poking in in public education in our country.
And again, if you think of public education as an edifice, you know, part of the edifice of our democracy, It's both not surprising given how under attack democracy is, but also really scary.
I want to hover on that point as we close because I think that to me is, you know, everything that we talked about today I think is frightening and it's also important.
The idea that you would have to send your kid to school and they would be learning a certain religious worldview, they would be taught theology or the Bible.
That is, yeah, it's hard for me to get my head around that in terms of that being quote-unquote a public school.
But let's go back to the philosophical beginnings of the American public school system.
In the 1830s, Horace Mann, some of you might be familiar with Horace Mann, Massachusetts legislator, began to advocate for the creation of public schools that would be universally available to all children, free of charge and funded by the state.
Mann and other proponents of common schools emphasized that a public investment in education Would benefit the whole nation by transforming children into literate, moral and productive citizens.
That's from the Department of Education.
So the idea going back almost 200 years now, and really with roots in the American founding, going back to the 1780s, is that public schools are to be open to all.
And let's think about it.
They are to be the sites of formation that teach students all kinds of things, math and reading and science and so on.
But also, the ideals that the American experiment is formed on.
The ideals of the American experiment as a place where everyone has the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.
Where everyone is supposed to be equal under the law.
Where everyone is supposed to have the ability to pursue the American dream.
Now, we've never achieved that as a country, but the public schools have always been a site where we've tried to, even if we have never fully lived up to that creed, If you have religious schools, is it possible to undertake that kind of formation?
Is it possible to teach those kinds of ideals and core principles of the American experiment?
It seems like it's not.
And for me, that's what I took away from this case, is that the reason, as you just said, so many religious people want to attack these schools is because they understand they are.
Yeah, I mean, really well put, Bradley.
of formation when it comes to existing in the American public square.
Final thoughts on that whole kind of issue before we jump?
Yeah, I mean, really well put, Bradley.
And I think what I would say, I guess, since we haven't touched on it, is that private religious schools can exist.
And Americans United has absolutely no problem with that.
And that's great.
But they can exist.
They can serve folks who want to pay them money.
And they actually thrive better that way because that protects them from any governmental intrusion.
Which is important so they don't get told by the government, well, you have to teach this against your religious beliefs.
They can teach what they want.
So it's protective to keep church separate from state.
But when it comes to public education, you know, Horace Mann was absolutely right.
And I think that's why it's such a point of pride.
All of my kids are so proud that they received public education.
And I think the reason kids are is because they know that this is part of What makes you belong to American society in such a wonderfully profound way?
Not that you can't belong if you didn't go, so I don't want to misspeak, but that there's something really magical, like you described, Bradley, about your own experience, about having the opportunity to experience really a part of American democracy at its best, and one that encourages you to come together with people who are different from you and to accept them.
You know, and that comes from the top when you're a kid, because that's that that's not always our instincts as a kid.
So like the the top and the government, frankly, through public school, setting that tone is it's like one of those things like your mother could take so easy to take for granted.
But it's like one of those things that actually turns out to be so fundamental.
And without it, really, America wouldn't look like or be America anymore.
So I just so appreciate all that you do on your podcast, Bradley, to like bring light to the darkness.
And this is just a case where I'm just so happy that everyone is finding out about it because we cannot allow this type of sea change to take place in America where you would wake up one morning and your public school is in your church up the road.
Like that would just not be America anymore.
So thank you for shining a light.
Well, no, thank you and thank you to Americans United for taking on these battles.
And I'll just say that this is one place, I am usually not a fan of American exceptionalism, but this is one place where the United States is somewhat exceptional.
So I spent a good deal of time in the UK.
I have a lot of friends and people I care about who teach religious education.
At United Kingdom schools.
So like they teach at what are what are known as they teach at the public school version in England, say.
And if you're in England, you go to religious education, like at your public school.
OK, now that may take some different forms and it may not be as sort of homophobic and other things that we're talking about in the case in Oklahoma.
Nonetheless, You're a Muslim student, you're an atheist student, you're going to religious education in England.
In Denmark?
There's still a state church!
Denmark's like one of the most secular countries in the world, right?
Still a state church.
Here's my point.
This is actually one place where I'm kind of like, yeah, we're a little bit exceptional because our public schools have served this function.
And to disrupt that would be to disrupt something that is really pretty, pretty amazing, I think, about the United States.
It really would be.
Just one last thing, Bradley, that I think like the word power should come onto your show right now.
And this is a power grab.
This is about Trying to edify, codify, you know, preserve like massive power in America for one set of insiders, right?
And feel that they have a monopoly on what it is to be American.
It really is.
And I just I think that that's really an important part of this story and that it's happening because of a backlash against all of the equalizing that we've been puttering towards in recent years.
And I just You know, really admire your listeners and all those folks in America who refuse to give up because we are on the winning side of our country's history.
And everybody better remember that before they give up, because it's a hard time, I know.
I agree.
So what, on that note, what's the best way to stay in touch with what Americans United is doing on these litigation fronts and all that you're doing and ways maybe to contribute or get involved in fighting some of these battles?
Please join us everyone.
Join us today at Americans United on all forms of social media.
It's just at Americans United everywhere and also go to our website au.org.
We made it really pretty and accessible.
I hope it shows like how inclusive it is and also how How church-state separation sounds very academic in a way, and abstract to a lot of people, but how it's really about all of our right to live as ourselves and believe as we choose.
And, you know, whether you're from the LGBTQ community, you believe in women's reproductive freedom, you believe in public education, you believe in equality.
For religious minorities and racial minorities, you are one of us and I really hope that you consider joining us today and supporting us because we need it.
Yeah, and Americans United is also just fun.
I've been, I've hung out with y'all and it's actually like the least, you know, academic, dusty, ivory tower thing you can imagine.
It's actually really amazing, fun, dynamic people who are putting their time and energy and money on the line every day to change the world.
All right, friends, find me at Bradley Onishi, find the show at Straight White JC.
We do this three times a week, so no outside funding, no big grant, no university support.
So help us out if you can on Patreon, Venmo, or PayPal.
Thankful to all of you who support us, and we'll be back later this week with It's in the Code and the weekly roundup.
But for now, we'll say thank you to Rachel Lazar and all of you for listening, and we'll catch you next time.
