Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, is stepping into the national spotlight this week as a key figure in a landmark Supreme Court battle over religious liberty and public education.
But it’s not the kind of attention most Republicans would seek out in the deeply red state, which is also part of the colloquially named Bible Belt.
Drummond, a declared candidate for governor, is seeking to block the creation of the nation’s first taxpayer-funded Catholic charter school when justices hear oral arguments on April 30. The consolidated cases before the Supreme Court involve the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board and St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, with Drummond urging the justices to uphold a state Supreme Court decision that found the publicly funded school unconstitutional.
While national conservative leaders and school choice advocates rally behind the Catholic virtual school, Drummond has emerged as its fiercest opponent. One of his most discussed talking points opposing the school rests on a slippery slope argument, claiming that if the state allows a Catholic charter school to open, it would be forced to fund “Sharia law or even Satanism.”
If the religious charter school is allowed to proceed in the state, Drummond contends that “the inevitable result will be taxpayer-funded public schools teaching Sharia law, Wicca — even the Church of Satan,” he said in a March 31 post on X.
Attorney general warns of ‘Sharia law, Wicca … Church of Satan’
Drummond’s arguments have attempted to appeal to the state’s evangelical base, even as Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) has maintained a friendly posture toward religious freedom in the state.
But religious freedom experts who are critical of Drummond’s approach say it reeks of fearmongering and hypocrisy, pointing out that Catholic organizations already receive public funds in Oklahoma for hospitals, foster care, and other services.
“Religious freedom is for everyone. … Charter schools are schools of choice,” said Nicole Garnett, a professor at Notre Dame Law School whose research focuses on education law and religious liberty. “They are designed to give parents options, and the option of a religious education is attractive to many parents.”
Earlier this month, Stitt, who is unable to seek reelection after his second term ends next year, issued an executive order directing state agencies to “root out” laws and regulations that exclude religious individuals or institutions from public programs, funds, and benefits.
Drummond’s opposition also puts him sharply at odds with Republican senators such as Ted Cruz (R-TX), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and James Lankford (R-OK) — powerful figures whose endorsements he would likely court in his gubernatorial bid. All three joined a Senate amicus brief urging the court to side against Drummond, arguing that excluding religious organizations from public charter school eligibility “would set a dangerous precedent.”
“Upholding the Oklahoma Charter Schools Act with the included exclusion of religious organizations would set a dangerous precedent, signaling that religious organizations are not welcome in public projects,” the senators wrote in an amicus brief to the high court. “This would not only violate the First Amendment, but it would also deprive society of the valuable contributions that these organizations make.”
Cozying up to the White House
Drummond’s posture in the case has raised eyebrows in GOP circles, not just for its substance but also its timing as he makes his bid for higher office. Just three weeks ago, Drummond posted a photo at the White House on April 8 after meeting President Donald Trump at the White House.
“The President’s decisive leadership on border security and illegal immigration is restoring America’s safety, sovereignty, and strength,” Drummond wrote on X.
In Oklahoma, where Trump won every county in the 2024 election, Drummond’s break from a conservative consensus is risky both legally and politically.
Religious charter schools have become a top priority for Republicans nationwide, fueled by court victories for religious freedom activists that have chipped away at 20th-century court interpretations of the First Amendment’s establishment clause and free exercise clause.
Where advocates of St. Isidore find hope in a favorable decision
One area of great consistency among the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority has been cases involving conflicts to the free exercise of religious freedoms.
One of the most prominent recent cases cited in support of St. Isidore is the 2022 case Carson v. Makin, a landmark decision that determined the free exercise clause of the First Amendment did not comport with Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement that barred the use of public vouchers to pay for tuition at religious-based private schools. Carson was one of the cases Stitt ordered Oklahoma agencies to ensure their laws and statutes adhere to throughout the state government.
Thomas Fisher, executive vice president and litigation director for EdChoice, told the Washington Examiner he believes one of St. Isidore and the charter school board’s main legal pitches is that “this case is materially indistinguishable from Carson.”
Another argument from Drummond is that charter schools are inherently governmental actors because they receive public funds and are supervised by state regulators. But experts like Garnett, who has advised the St. Isidore organizers, said that places the “educational pluralism” of all charter schools in peril if the attorney general is right.
“A decision suggesting that states can transform private actors into governmental ones by slapping the label ‘public’ on them would also threaten the autonomy and religious liberty of private organizations that receive government funds to advance a range of public goals, including poverty alleviation, social services, healthcare and many others,” Garnett wrote for the Wall Street Journal. “Either charter schools are government actors or they aren’t.”
When asked whether Fisher had any concerns about possible applications for extremists, such as Drummond’s concerns, he noted there would still be a high bar to obtain a religious charter that would likely deter any of his hypothetical dilemmas concerning satanic schools.
“It takes too much money to pull together what you need to have a successful application,” Fisher said.
“States have very rigorous requirements, and they can still have all those rigorous requirements and quality controls and insistence on demonstrations of the ability to deliver quality education, and somebody who’s just trying to pull a stunt with some offensive sounding scary type of charter school is not going to have the resources for that sort of thing,” Fisher added.
Drummond’s war on religion in education
More than 50 elected officials, scholars, and advocacy groups have backed the school’s creation. In a joint statement organized by Stitt, they argue that denying a religious charter school is itself discriminatory and violates the free exercise clause.
Drummond’s stance is so unusual for the Trump era of conservatism that he also finds himself aligned with progressive groups, such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which also filed suit against the school.
Oklahoma’s top education official since 2023, Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, defended against Drummond’s efforts to stymie his own work reinterpreting the state’s role in public education.
“I’ve been really disappointed in the attorney general’s position on this,” Walters told the Washington Examiner. “I was elected by the people of Oklahoma, and I’m saying they are crystal clear that they want their religious liberties respected.
Walters’s work has focused primarily on addressing the state’s historically troublesome quality in public education, defending rights to present Christian values in schools, and implementing Trump’s education agenda on the state level.
While Walters has not made any declaration for a governorship, he has long been rumored to announce a run, which would raise the stakes of this court hearing as the justices determine which side has correctly interpreted the law.
Oklahomans “understand that the Bible, Christian father, play a major role in American history and they think America should go back to protecting their communities, to go back to not running Christians out of education, out of our schools,” Walters said, noting he believes “you’re seeing an AG out of step with conservatives and Oklahomans.”
Call for more ‘no-cost educational options’
At the heart of the case is the age-old tension between the First Amendment’s two religion clauses — the establishment clause, which bars government from endorsing religion, and the free exercise clause, which protects individuals and groups from being excluded because of their faith.
“The U.S. Constitution protects St. Isidore’s freedom to participate in Oklahoma’s charter-school program, and it supports the board’s decision to provide more high-quality, no-cost educational options for Oklahoma families,” said Jim Campbell, chief legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which defended the board as Drummond attempted to cancel the school’s contract in court.
The justices could use the Oklahoma case to clarify how far states can go in excluding religious entities from public programs.
However, with Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused — likely due to past ties to Notre Dame and personal connections to lawyers in the case — it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the justices could rule in a 4-4 split, which could jeopardize the petitioners’ chances to see St. Isidore’s charter plan through or leave the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling in Drummond’s favor intact.
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For Drummond, the fight is one that he sees as an important line in the sand for the separation of church and state. But that line is one that advocates of recent shifts in religious freedom interpretations at the high court say has long been used as an exclusionary device against people of all religious backgrounds.
The Washington Examiner reached out to a representative for Drummond.
