A new Guam law that allows private, religious schools to convert to publicly-funded charter schools is now drawing national attention.

A watchdog group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling out the legislature for Monday's veto override.

It argues that the law is unconstitutional and makes Guam just the second jurisdiction in the nation to allow for this.

But local attorney Mike Phillips, who represents a charter school applicant, disputes the group's contention.

Chris Line is an attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which advocates for the separation of church and state.

The group "religiously" monitors if you will, developments where it believes infringements arise.

This now includes the recent Guam Law to allow private, religious schools to become publicly funded charter schools.

"When I first saw that the governor had vetoed the bill, that was what first caught our attention," Line said. "We actually had intended to rebut the attorney general's opinion which said that it was legal, but before we were able to get that out the legislature had over-ridden the veto and so now we are just announcing that decision and noting that the governor was correct in her veto, in her letter that she vetoed that it is unconstitutional to require taxpayers to fund religious schools."

He argues that publicly funded charter schools become "state actors" by taking on the role a public school would fill, and are subject to the constitutional requirements of the separation of church and state.

"We have very strong religious freedom rights in this country, and the establishment clause kind of goes along with that because you cannot exercise your religious freedom rights if the government is able to impose a particular religion upon you," Line said. "So part of that is making sure that our public schools are neutral and state actors are not able to promote or endorse a certain religion. They must be neutral in regards to religion."

Phillips says that may have been true with previous Supreme Court holdings, but not with the current one.

He says the applicable ruling is strictly about non-discrimination.

"The government doesn't have to create charter schools, but when you do and when you allow others to run it, you've got to allow everybody," he said. "You cant discriminate against people because they're religious. The current court has said, well if you allow others to run charter schools then you've gotta allow religious people to run charter schools. You cannot discriminate against people not just because of their religion but because they're religious, it's the same thing. 

We're not gonna hide the fact that clearly the supreme court is very extremist right now. they've taken a very extremist position on religious freedom. We feel stepped over the line and completely erased the establishment clause which was important in our founding. But even within the steps, the supreme court has taken many we haven't agreed with, they haven't gone this far.

You know it's well thought out because they didn't say religious people are entitled to a charter school, that's not what it holds. it holds that if government chooses to have charter schools and chooses to have private organizations run them then when you're picking between private organizations or schools you can't discriminate one or another because they happen to be religious and that's it." 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has not ruled out challenging the Guam law but is focused right now on a similar Oklahoma law.

Phillips is skeptical the high court will hear it.

"It really is not controversial at all, you know what it really is Nestor, you can quote me on this, this is a special interest group that other people who have political interests are dissatisfied with a decision go out and get," he said.