Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules Catholic Charter School Unconstitutional
“Enforcing the St. Isidore contract would create a slippery slope.”
This Oklahoma Catholic agrees with the decision.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled against the state’s Virtual Charter School Board, striking down what would have been the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school.
“Enforcing the St. Isidore contract would create a slippery slope,” the court stated.
You think?!
St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would have been an online school, mainly aimed at those in rural areas.
From Channel 9:
In June 2023, the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved a contract with St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic Charter School. Attorney General Gentner Drummond then sued the State Virtual Charter School Board, and each member in their official capacity, for entering into a contract with St. Isidore.
Drummond argued, that the moment that the virtual charter school board approved St. Isidore’s contract, the school became a public entity, therefore crossing the line of church and state.
“This State’s establishment of a religious charter school violates Oklahoma statutes, the Oklahoma Constitution, and the Establishment Clause. St. Isidore cannot justify its creation by invoking Free Exercise rights as a religious entity,” the court wrote. “St. Isidore came into existence through its charter with the State and will function as a component of the State’s public school system.”
The plaintiffs argued the school would be a private school. Justice James Winchester said Oklahoma law states “a charter school is a public school.”
“As such, a charter school must be nonsectarian,” the court continued.
The plaintiffs will likely appeal. It could go to the Supreme Court.
The New York Times made this snide remark: “The case is likely to be appealed, potentially pushing it toward the U.S. Supreme Court, whose conservative majority has broadly embraced the role of religion in public life and signaled an openness to directing taxpayer money to religious schools.”
Okay, Sarah Mervosh. They can have their opinions without it affecting their rulings.
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Comments
When did freedom of religion become freedom from religion?
Arguably sometime in the 60s with people like O’Hare.
Also arguably, much earlier when publicly funded schooling began to take hold, and the Progressives started with the “We’re not a religion because we don’t worship any supernatural beings.”
Worship of a “supernatural being” is not the definitive characteristic of a “religion.” “Atheism” is considered to be a religion, one that “believes” there is no “supernatural being.” But make no mistake, atheism is a religion because atheists maintain a belief that god does not exist and any opinion about god is, perforce, a “religious” belief (it is a belief about the existence/non-existence of a divine being – they are two side of the same coin). (I’m an atheist myself and have no problem acknowledging it’s a religious belief. Atheism does not necessarily reject “spirituality,” just the existence of a creator god.)
So, arguably, a secular (atheistic) school system is also advancing a system of religious belief, even if it only ignores the potential for god’s existence (never mind if it actually proselytizes against the existence of god).
//Atheism” is considered to be a religion//
No, it isn’t. By definition it is an absence of belief.
Yes it is. I have a religious belief. I believe there is no god. During the vaccine mandates that affected some workers, atheists were not precluded from seeking a “religious exemption.” I’m an atheist who received one. The law considers atheism a religion. Tell me, can a State have atheism preached in its schools without violating the alleged “separation of church and state”?
Atheism is not an absence of belief; it’s a belief in absence.
You’re confusing agnosticism with atheism.
One of the tells for it being a religion is so many of its adherents are hostile to other religions – JUST like other religions. An agnostic may be hostile to (say) state moneys being spent to promote a single religious point of view (including yours, apparently). However he/she usually won’t proselytize for agnosticism like most atheists will for atheism.
DaveGinOly, Thank you for your clear thinking and honesty!
Atheism believes that there is NO God or deity. Agnostism is the belief that they don’t know what may exist or if there is a “hereafter”. So Atheistics believe that something doesn’t exist, though they can’t prove it, while Agnostics don’t make that claim but are smart enough to know they don’t know and something may or may not exist. I am smart enough to know what I don’t know, rather than claim I know something I can’t prove. The definition of “religion” is: “the belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods:
“ideas about the relationship between science and religion”
Using that definition, atheism is not a religion in any sense. It’s ignorance. Ignorance to know what exists or doesn’t exist, but too ignorant to admit it. I’ll stick to being agnostic and admit I don’t know.
can a State have atheism preached in its schools without violating the alleged “separation of church and state”?
h whole concept of “separatio of church and state” is a false concept. Te US Constitution never did “establish” this as a “principle”. The ONLY thing that First Article of Ammndment does is prohibit Congress (that is, of the whole United States) shall make no law establishing a “religion” (by which was plainly meant a particular religions sect or organisation or denomination) as HE NATIONAL RELIGION of the whole f the United States. Go and read your history.. nearly every state, at the time the Union was formed, had its own established denomination. New York was Methodist, Maryland was Roman Catholic, Massachussetts was Congregational etc. The US Constitution had NO intent to make government at any level recognising any particular religious organisation or denomination a prohibited thing. The ONLY goal was to prevent one religious sect (say, Roman Catholic, or Baptist, or Methodist) to be estblished as THE naional religion in all of te states.
The state in question here is NOT establishing Roman Catholicism as the state religion (which would NOT violate the US Constitution at all)
Of curse, I think the catholics by agreeing to becoe an exension of the State govrenment via their “charte” status is a rally dumb thing to do. Tha WOULD open the door for the state or some agency thereof beginning to tell the catholics how to run their lives, what to believe, the values they must uphold…whenever a state governmenget their claws intto an organisation or activity, they tend to micromanage and corrupt the whole of it. But that’s the call of the ctholics putting together this programme. MY kids well never darken the door of any state funded school, nor will they ever darken the coor of any roman catholic school.
By definition, you are wrong. The definition is:
Re·li·gion
/rəˈlij(ə)n/
noun
1.
the belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods:
“ideas about the relationship between science and religion”
▪
a particular system of faith and worship:
“the world’s great religions”
▪
a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance:
“consumerism is the new religion”
I can’t believe so many intelligent people would buy your malarkey. In the US you have the right to believe what you want, and the government can’t tell you that you must believe in a God or not. It must not take any position, particularly when it comes to teaching.
not at taxpayers expense
military
courts
treasury
that is the job of the government
too bad the gop is cohabitating with the dems
And hasn’t the biden administration done a fine job in those 3 areas.
Freedom from having to pay to support a religion.
At the time the bill of rights was ratified.
It’s not the free exercise clause involved here, it’s the establishment clause, which bans the government from adopting any religious position.
As for the NYT’s snide remark, if this were to come before the Supreme Court it would uphold the decision 8-1. Thomas believes that although the entire rest of the first amendment is incorporated into the 14th amendment, the establishment clause is not. I think he’s correct, but almost nobody else does.
The Supreme Court has been clear that the establishment and free exercise clauses go together, and either both are incorporated or neither. Thomas argues, and I think logic supports him, that the establishment clause is very different from the rest of the bill of rights, in that it doesn’t actually protect a right, it’s just a mandate on Congress, so the 14th’s language doesn’t include it.
Garbage! The Framers knew perfectly well what ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION meant: church-imposed taxes (Patrick Henry won a famous case on this subject), religious tests to hold public office, among other things. Running a school funding program that includes religious schools of many varieties is not an ESTABLISHMENT of religion.
It would be if the program was restricted to schools operating under particular ‘religious’ views while excluding others from taxpayer funding. So if you want taxes paying for a charter school operated by the Satanic cults then you can have one operated by the Episcopalians but can’t exclude any if you allow one.
Personally I prefer the true choice model which puts the funding into the hands of the Parent to decide what educational environment is best for their children. Might be a public school across town, a private secular school, homeschooling, a neighborhood pod based homeschool, a Religious affiliated school. In any event we sidestep messy fights about funding decisions by the State when we put the $ into the hands of the Parents.
“It’s not the free exercise clause involved here, it’s the establishment clause, which bans the government from adopting any religious position.”
Only under a religion-hostile reading of “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. A non-hostile reading would be “neither for nor against” an establishment of religion. A law prohibiting murder is a “religious position”. Ask an abortion rights advocate.
And “the separation of church and state” is a self-serving rant from Thomas Jefferson – not the Constitution.
establishment clause, which bans the government from adopting any religious position.
not at all. The “establishment clause” prevents OINLY the Federal government from establisihng any particular religion as the NATIONAL religion in all the states. Stattes are now, and were then, perfectly free tto establish (or continue with an already established ) religion IN THAT STATE. Read that First Article of Ammendment carefully It says CONGRESS (that is the US Congress) shall make no law…….. States were then and remain free to establish as they see fit, but ONLY for that particular state.
That would be a gift from the unabashedly anti-Catholic bigot Hugo Black. You can also thank FDR for nominating him to the Supreme Court.
Black was from Alabama, which is a source of great embarrassment and disappointment to Alabamians.
.
Originally, the Bill of Rights never applied to the States.
Some of the States had an official religion when the constitution was adopted.
The Supreme Court “magically” decided that some of the Bill of Rights applied to the States because of the 14th amendment..
If the authors of the 14th amendment intended for the bill of rights to apply to the states, they would have written it in with plain English. They did not.
Under a proper interpretation of the constitution, it is OK for a state to fund a religious school.
When one forces taxpayers to fund institutions those taxpayers have a right to demand the institutions of their choosing. You cannot steal money from people in order to build crappy, overpriced, near-useless public schools and then impose on a segment of the population the requirement that they have to pay for schools that teach things that are clearly untrue and silly (to be overly charitable) along with failing, in general, in their primary mission of education. People cannot be forced into government indoctrination of lunatic ideas and forced to pay for it at the same time.
The solution is either to get rid of the public school system (the best alternative) or to allow those who want to use their forced funding towards schools that are to their preference. If that ends up being religious schools then that is their choice and there is nothing un-Constitutional about it. The state is not establishing any religion. It is a school that people can choose or not, as should be their right with their money, to begin with.
The fact that this is an online “school” on top of it all, makes the court’s decision even sillier.
(the best alternative)
I think there’s a better one. Remove the power from the state down to the smallest community possible. State grants based on size, to keep the basic funding uniform. I’m not talking cities, I’m talking – at most – a few neighborhoods. Let those decide what’s best and wrangle it out with each other.
It’s the only way to make things work in some place that isn’t entirely homogeneous.
You’re combining two different elements of “school choice”.
“allow those who want to use their forced funding towards schools that are to their preference. If that ends up being religious schools then that is their choice”
That is a true statement but that’s not what we’re talking about here. What you described is a voucher system, where kids receive funding equivalent to what it would have cost them to be educated in public school and use it to help pay for attendance in a school of their choice. In this case, the school itself is still a private school, receipt of voucher funds does not change that.
What this story was about is a “charter school”. A charter school is, by state law in Oklahoma, a public school, not a private school. It receives its funding from the state just like any other public school. It’s not a voucher or scholarship situation.
I’m pretty sure, if it makes it that far, this ruling would be upheld by the Supreme court.
Let’s say CAIR applied for and was granted a contract to start an Islamic charter school, funded by Oklahoma taxpayers, would you be OK with that? If not, then you shouldn’t be OK with this either.
Yep. The real solution is to amend the OK charter school legislation and/or simply expand to true ‘school choice. Allow Parents to determine what educational institution best fits their Children. Then allow 85% of the per student education funding to follow that Student to whatever choice the Parents make. The remaining 15% is keep the public school facilities ‘warm’ b/c the school district must have the classrooms to accommodate the potential of serving every child within that district and they need funds to maintain the facilities and to pay the existing debt load they entered into.
Charter schools want to be within the public school system because it allows them to collect tax monies. If they can’t do that, they’re just another private school.
They can collect the taxes indirectly via tuition from the Students that their academic program is able to attract. IOW the true free market v a captive market plagued by grift, graft and corrupted vested interests all of whom, based upon general lack of performance in many public schools, seem to place the interest of the Students dead last…until they need another bond issue or to raise taxes for teacher pay/benefits.
That was exactly my thoughts.
NYC and others somehow find Muslim schools
No, they don’t.
I would be OK with it as long as kids had other choices. I am not religious, but I paid to send my kid to a private Catholic school because it was the best in town. The prayers didn’t hurt her. Their curriculum was wonderful.
Poor example. islam is not a religion – it is a political ideology – and it is an enemy of the West, and of America in particular.
Further, CAIR, themselves, are terrorist co-conspirators, being an arm of the muslim brotherhood.
Wrong. Islam is a religion, squarely within the meaning of the first amendment. Any attempt to redefine “religion” is just as illegitimate as an attempt to define “arms” so as to exclude AR-15s.
I love how you exhibit such confidence while you spout moronic BS.
islam demands the power of state – all the power of state – wherever it is found. It is a political ideology.
That doesn’t matter. The fact is that when people in the 1780s said “religion” they meant all religions, including Islam. Several of the founders explicitly said so. “Mohammedanism, Hindooism, and every kind of heresy”.
Milhouse, How can one “redefine” something which doesn’t have a consistent definition? Still waiting for your definition.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair, Islam is both a religion and a political ideology.
In fact, I can’t see the difference among “religion”, “politics”, “worldview”, etc. They are all involved with views of “the good”.
No, that’s not what I was talking about. I was talking about everyone who pays for the school system, which includes people who don’t have children. Everyone who pays has a say, children or not. This is not a matter of giving money to people with kids to let them spend it on private schools. This is a matter of the people paying for the institution having a say in what that institution is and how it operates.
And the constitution says that if they do so, it can’t be religious. But what you’re proposing can be achieved by tax credits. People donate to schools they like, and get a credit against their taxes, so it’s essentially those taxes that are going where the taxpayers want, but not directly so it’s constitutional.
And the constitution says that if they do so, it can’t be religious.
No.
What the Constitution says is that it can’t exclude any religion or favor any above others.
NOWHERE does the Constitution demand a complete absence of religion.
Who is being “forced” to attend here?
I attended Catholic (Penguin) schools for most of my education. We always had non-Catholic classmates whose parents just didn’t want their kids attending the local, dangerous crappy public schools. BTW, unless they opted in they weren’t forced to attend any religion classes or even goto mass, etc..
As long as there’s a chance to choose for your kid to attend a dangerous crappy public school how is the parental units choosing to send them to st. elsewhere academy any different from sending them to st Joseph academy on a voucher – other than paperwork?
I smell public teacher union backing for this legal challenge..
It doesn’t matter that nobody’s being forced to attend. The government is teaching religion, and that’s exactly what the founders refused to allow.
And the entire reason why Catholic schools exist in the first place is that the whole day, every minute of every lesson, is teaching Catholicism. The purpose of every lesson is for the greater glory of Christ; even lunch and recess are designed for that purpose. The lessons are given in a manner consistent with the Church’s teachings and by people who model those teachings, and thus are likely to produce children whose lives follow those teachings. That’s why the Supreme Court said religious schools are exempt from anti-discrimination laws in hiring, because every employee is a minister.
And the constitution says a government entity can’t do that.
Really? “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or protecting the free exercise thereof;” At the time the Bill of Rights was adopted, Maryland had Roman Catholicism as an established religion and 11 other colonies had “Christianity” as an established religion. Your tenuous grasp of American history is fallacious. As a matter of fact, Congress ordered the printing and free distribution of Bibles. Nothing in the 14th Amendment altered the meaning or scope of the First.
“It doesn’t matter that nobody’s being forced to attend. The government is teaching religion, and that’s exactly what the founders refused to allow.”
Milhouse, Your lack of a coherent definition of “religion” causes you to write silly things.
The current government-run schools are completely pervaded with religion because education is inseparable from beliefs about the good, the beautiful, and the true. The only question is “Whose religion is a government school teaching?”
CRT, Anthropogenic Climate Change, and Gender Theory are all deeply religious, and are taught in many government schools.
Nature abhors a religious vacuum.
get rid of them
To me, the situation is unclear (maybe I have to re-read the article). It’s my understanding the religious school was made part of the school system. I’d possibly agree that’s verboten. But there is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat, one of those methods being to distribute education vouchers for parents to use at the schools (including the public schools & private and religious schools) of their choice. This makes support for a religious school the parents’ choice, rather than the state’s.
That’s great but it’s not what a charter school is. Charter schools, by definition, are public schools. That’s what the term means.
The point is, once you have a genuine voucher system — one that works simply as it should, and is not encrusted with barnacles forced upon it by teacher unions and other democrats — charter schools become quaint anachronisms, like party-line telephones. Charter schools remain hot items in some polities specifically because the polity has nothing resembling a workable voucher system, and this is the closest they can approach it (which isn’t very close).
“You cannot steal money from people in order to build crappy, overpriced, near-useless public schools and then impose on a segment of the population the requirement that they have to pay for schools that teach things that are clearly untrue and silly.”
Why not? It’s what the government does with NPR/PBS.
In simple terms: all education dollars do not belong to the state, except of what it “lets you” keep. The education dollars belong to families (students) and don’t have to be laundered through politicians while going to schools.
Public schools are unconstitutional
Unless a State’s constitution obligates the State to provide education.
States can’t violate the Constitution either
There is nothing in the U.S. constitution that proclaims public schools to be unconstitutional. The 10A allows states to do as they wish outside of the powers given to the federal government. That includes the funding of public schools, if they so wish (and all do).
And of course the States and their political subdivisions are restricted by the rest of the Constitution at least in theory though some States seem confused on this point re 2A and many others re 9th amendment.
“Let’s say CAIR applied for and was granted a contract to start an Islamic charter school, funded by Oklahoma taxpayers..” Just waiting for Minnesota and Michigan to do just that……
Doesn’t NYC already do that for Hasidic Jews in the city? There was some lawsuit about it at some point – not sure what the result was….
No, it doesn’t. You are thinking about the KIryas Joel public school district, which runs a public school that is Jewish in its culture but is entirely secular. No religion is taught there at all. They’re very careful about that, because there are people who check on them and would love to catch them out. Basically the only kids who go there are ones with special needs who wouldn’t benefit from religious teaching anyway. Any taxpayer in the district could send their children there, but none want to except for these.
Amazingly inept understanding of the Constitution by the OK Supreme Court.
Ugh. I see what they did there. Disregard my comment.
If the court ruled the school violated the laws and constitution of Oklahoma, then there can be no appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court cannot overrule a state court’s interpretation of state law or state constitution.
The first teacher at the first tax-payer funded public school in America (still a colony, at the time) was a guy named Rev. Ralph Wheelock. Later on, in few towns over, another guy named Rev. John Cotton helped establish another public school named Boston Latin. Both schools had a ROBUST theological component to their respective curricula.
Horace Mann, considered by many to the be the father of the contemporary public education model that exists today, had one book issued to every student in Massachusetts: The Bible.
tax funded goes against the idea of america as a
freedom FROM government country
the government controls the tax rate >>>collection>>distribution
History is good. Thank you!
Colonial history, and any history before the 14th amendment, is irrelevant here, because there was an established church, which the constitution then explicitly banned. Actually any history before the incorporation doctrine is irrelevant; until then states could establish religions, censor newspapers, take property without compensation, lock people up without charges or trial, etc. Only the federal government couldn’t do those things.
More garbage! The Bill of Rights was mandated by states (Virginia most notably) and was required to underscore some selected unalienable rights that were not to be impaired. The idea that the states didn’t already understand that they respected these same rights is unadulterated BS.
BS or not BS, it is history. Certain states with official state religions were intent on making sure the federal government did not uniformly impose a DIFFERENT state religion… they had no intention of relinquishing their own.
until the gop gets some courage and the american voters back them up to stop
allll tax funding
these indoctrination centers will continue to operate to destroy america
pay teachers directly
no more unions etc
When will you get the courage to back them up, instead of just posting meaningless posts here on LI? When?
Junior.
Next time you feel like hitting the Submit button to post fragrant tripe such as this, you might want to look up the word “ironic.”
And quit upvoting yourself.
One change brought about by banning opening prayer is that nobody knows how to conjugate old-timey verbs anymore. It was one of the language skills that kids picked up at that age when regularly confronted by it.
The actual purpose of the bible reading and the pledge was to get the kids to shut up and pay attention.
Devolve the dollars back to the parents and let them decide how their kids are educated. All this does is guarantee kids get indoctrinated into the latest progressive fad.
I have no idea why the author has to lead with “as an Oklahoma Catholic”. So friggen what? As a Vermont Catholic this ruling sucks.
Funny … the state (all states) have no problem FORCING religious hospitals to service the public. Of course, we all understand that it was, basically, the religious who built most of the hospitals to even get the health system in the country going. There’s a son why they were all named “Saint This” or “Mount That” hospital. Government had very little to do with health care. It was only after private religious organizations built out the hospital infrastructure did government deem the time right to step in and take control of it all, while trying to convince the public that religious charities never had anything to do with health care …
So, the Oklahoma Supreme Court would have no problem forcing the emergency room at Saint Marks Memorial Hospital to service everyone who comes in (making it a public institution, essentially) but they would never allow Saint Marks to run a school (online!!) at which only those who want to go there attend …
Yeah … consistency is not a big thing in our judicial system …
Grrr … “run a PUBLIC/charter school”
Charters must be free of popery.
Are private entities allowed to make charter schools?
If yes, but all such schools are proclaimed public (thus preventing entities from creating them), isn’t it a designed end around preventing religious entities from partaking in state offerings to other private entities simply because they are religious?
Wouldn’t that law itself create the restriction of religious entities from participating in state offerings simply because they are religious? Isn’t that a violation of the US Constitution/1st A?
That would be a contradiction in terms. The definition of a charter school is one that has a charter from the government, which makes it a government entity.
Charter schools are public schools that are run on the government’s behalf by private entities rather than by the local school board. They’re not subject to public service regulations, so they can experiment with all kinds of things that regular public schools can’t. They’re free of the teacher unions, which is why Democrats hate them. But at the end of the day they’re still government schools.
Still, doesn’t allowing the school to be run by private entities, excluding religious ones, violate the first?
No, religious entities are allowed to run charter schools on contract for the government, they just can’t make them religious in nature, or use them to promote a religious agenda, which defeats the entire point of them wanting to do so in the first place.
This–
“Charter schools are public schools that are run on the government’s behalf by private entities rather than by the local school board.”
Means the answer to this–
“Are private entities allowed to make charter schools?”
Is yes.
Private entities ARE allowed to make charter schools. They do so in conjunction with the government.
If they do it without the government then it’s simply a private school.
The people who tell you what to post need to make it simpler, so someone like you, a Democrat, can understand it,
This strikes home because it’s so funny, and ignorant. In 1968 I taught in an all Black school – Sts. Paul & Augustine in Washington, D.C. in the riot area. The school was not a Charter School, it was a private school that was designated a Title I school because D.C. then determined Title I status by the number of children who went to the worst performing high schools in D.C. – in our case, Cardozo.
I was paid an annual salary of $5,300 – less than I earned working construction in New York – but I learned more from the kids (and the Catholic Church hierarchy) than I ever learned in law school.
Shout out for the teachers there – the only and oldest Order of Black Nuns, the Oblate Sisters of Providence (outside of Baltimore). They were treated like crap by the Monsignor and his crew, and their convent was sold to a developer who had the stones to call it “Bishop’s Gate” catering to homosexuals.
So, in 1968 the taxpayers could subsidize a Catholic private school but in 2024, in Oklahoma, they can’t subsidize a Catholic Charter school? How far we have “Progressed.”
Title 1 is a federal program that funds certain specific services at both government and private schools, including religious schools. Those services must not have an overt religious character.
So you were teaching at a religious school, not a government school. The school was not government funded, but it offered certain services that were. Thus it’s not relevant to this decision, which is about a plan to have a religious government school.
How does this differ to a voucher system where parents choose where to send their kids, and the state funds the education?
The state funding education is not the state funding religion, even though the education is, in this case, provide by Roman Catholicism.
So long as the state doesn’t dictate what the school must believe there’s no establishment issue, simply 14th Amendment compliance – equality of treatment under the law.
It differs precisely because the school is a government entity, while a school accepting vouchers is not.
Nothing differs ‘to’ anything.
They differ FROM other things.
In this context, ‘to’ and ‘from’ are actually words with opposing meanings.
A is similar TO B, in that they’re both letters, but B is different FROM A in that A is a vowel.
The hard part is deciding whether something is different FROM or different THAN. The rule is so cloudy that you can’t even get certainty from experts.
Oklahoma will prevail in the Supreme Court because Congress is barred from making a law respecting establishment of religion. What states do with religion is protected by the First, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. If states were prohibited from establishing religions, government monopoly compulsory public schools that inculcate secular progressive humanism would be banned by the Constitution.
I have zero confidence in that analysis being adopted by any government forum.