Governor defends executive order on religious-school funding and cites St. Isidore Supreme Court case

The governor defended an executive order he said directs state agencies to avoid excluding applicants from public grant programs on the basis of religion, saying the directive aligns with recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

"If you're gonna have a public benefit, you cannot discriminate based on someone's religion," the governor said, describing examples such as a historical-preservation grant or arts-council funding. He said the order simply instructs agencies to ensure they are not excluding organizations based on faith.

When asked about criticism from the attorney general — who the reporter said warned the order could require funding of organizations the reporter characterized as "radical Islam, satanism, Scientology" — the governor said he found the attorney general's characterizations offensive to people of the Muslim faith and said religious liberties protect all faiths equally.

The governor pointed to a pending U.S. Supreme Court case involving St. Isidore, a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma, as a potentially significant ruling on religious-school funding. "For the Supreme Court to grab the St. Isidore case in Oklahoma, we think it's gonna be a historic ... religious freedom case in the country," he said. He added that parents remain free to choose where to send their children and that public benefits such as Medicaid and food stamps already flow to private providers that accept them.

The governor said his executive order is intended to ensure state grant programs treat religious organizations the same as secular ones when eligibility criteria are otherwise met, and he rejected attempts to frame the policy as favoring any single religion.