A federal judge ruled Oklahoma cannot bar a Jewish charter school from the state program solely for its faith, rejecting officials’ establishment-clause defense.
U.S. District Judge David Russell held that Oklahoma officials violated the First Amendment when they shut the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation out of the state’s charter school program. The Reagan appointee found the denial illegal because the state may not exclude a school only for being religious.
Washington Examiner reported the ruling more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court left unresolved the broader fight over taxpayer-funded religious charter schools. Russell’s order puts the Jewish applicant back in play under Oklahoma’s existing charter rules.
Oklahoma officials denied the foundation’s bid to join the charter program. They argued that letting a Jewish school in would breach the First Amendment’s establishment clause, the bar on government establishing religion.
Russell rejected that claim. He concluded the denial itself crossed a different First Amendment line: equal treatment for religious applicants.
In the order, the judge said the state may not
“single out [religious] schools for exclusion solely because of their religious character.”
That holding frames the case as discrimination against religion, not as a forced endorsement of it.
Charter schools are public schools run under state contract. Families choose them; taxpayers fund them. When a state opens that door, it has to apply the same terms to religious and secular operators alike, or explain a lawful reason that is not simply “because they are religious.”
Oklahoma’s officials offered the establishment clause as that reason. Russell said that was not enough. Blocking Ben Gamla only for its Jewish character, he found, violated the First Amendment protections against targeting faith.
The foundation had sought entry into the program and met a wall. The court order removes that wall on constitutional grounds. What remains is the ordinary charter process, not a special religious disqualification.
The Supreme Court, more than a year earlier, declined to settle the national question of whether states must allow religious charter schools with public funds. That pause pushed the dispute back into lower courts and state programs.
Russell’s decision is one of those follow-on rulings. It does not revise every state’s charter statute. It does tell Oklahoma it cannot use a religious identity, standing alone, to freeze an applicant out.
For parents who want a Jewish charter option, the practical stakes are clear. A state program that invites private operators cannot treat a Jewish foundation as radioactive while welcoming everyone else. Equal access is the rule Russell applied.
Religious families should not need a federal order to get the same charter shot as anyone else, but when officials invent one, the Constitution still answers.
