A legal battle over whether Oklahoma can exclude a Catholic school from its charter program has sparked a national debate about religious liberty and, according to one constitutional attorney, revealed a deeper fracture within the First Amendment itself.

Philip Sechler, senior counsel and director of the Center for Free Speech at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), made the case in a recent piece published by National Review, framing the dispute as a test of whether America still understands the First Amendment’s religion clauses as working together — or at odds.

At issue is the state’s refusal to allow St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to participate in Oklahoma’s charter school system. While the state permits a broad array of private groups to apply, it prohibits religious ones. 

Former Attorney General John O’Connor determined that the ban violated constitutional precedent, but his successor, Gentner Drummond, sued to block the Catholic school’s approval — a reversal Sechler argues illustrates a growing legal contradiction.

“Already you can see the house dividing between one attorney general and the next,” Sechler wrote.

Drummond and others have warned that allowing the Catholic school to join the charter system could invite more radical religious groups to seek public funding. Sechler dismissed such hypotheticals as distractions from the constitutional issue at hand. 

“The matter at hand is how we view the First Amendment itself,” he said. “Do the establishment clause and free exercise clause work in tension with one another? Or do they work in tandem, requiring that religious groups be treated just like secular groups when they apply to operate a charter school in Oklahoma but without establishing that group’s faith as the state’s official religion?”

Sechler pointed to Kennedy v. Bremerton, a 2022 Supreme Court decision that affirmed a high school coach’s right to pray publicly, where Justice Neil Gorsuch clarified that the First Amendment’s establishment and free exercise clauses are not in conflict but “complementary.”

Alliance Defending Freedom, where Sechler serves, presented arguments before the Supreme Court on April 30, asking justices to overturn the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling against St. Isidore.

“If an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling currently under review by the U.S. Supreme Court is permitted to stand,” Sechler wrote, “America will find itself in the unfortunate position of having a divided house — not just within its borders, but within a single phrase of the Constitution itself.”