In the summer of 2024, the state of Oklahoma was torn apart not by the upcoming University of Oklahoma v. Oklahoma State University game but by state superintendent Ryan Walters’s bold move to incorporate the Bible into the instruction plans for all grades five to twelve. While some Oklahomans believed it was about time, others criticized its constitutionality. Leaders of multiple school districts stated that they would not implement more instruction on the Bible outside of what state standards already require, which was limited to state law since 2010 that permitted public school districts to provide elective Bible courses. At the more individual level, though, parents, students, teachers, and local religious leaders had more specific complaints. In October of 2024, the coalition of ACLU and four other organizations filed a lawsuit on behalf of 32 Oklahomans urging the Oklahoma Supreme Court to block Superintendent Walters’ mandate, and on March 10, 2025, the Supreme Court issued a stay on the purchase of Bibles for classrooms.
The Bible Education Mandate can be boiled down into two aspects: 1) physical copies of the Bible and the Ten Commandments must be provided to every classroom; and 2) teachers should incorporate the Bible into their curricula by focusing on how it shaped the foundational aspects of Western society, highlighting its pivotal role in historical moments, and discussing its influence on classical and contemporary works. While plaintiffs of the current lawsuit firmly ground it in state law, it is just as, if not more, essential to evaluate the mandate in terms of its federal constitutionality, as states like Texas, Louisiana, and Florida have similar mandates in the making. Through the Fourteenth Amendment, SCOTUS has utilized a selective incorporation doctrine to apply Bill of Rights protection responsibilities to the state government on a case-by-case basis. Everson v. Board of Education specifically incorporated the Establishment Clause.[1] Given the full ramifications of the mandate, it violates the Establishment Clause by promoting religious instruction in public schools, using taxpayer funds to support one religious text over others, and coercing teachers into religious indoctrination. The mandate’s claim of teaching the Bible for “‘historical, cultural, and literary context’” does not justify the constitutional violations it entails, particularly in light of established legal precedents.[2]
Weighing the purported secular purpose of the mandate against its more realistic implications, the education department is arguably sending a message of endorsement by requiring the physical presence of Bibles. In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.[3] Likewise, stacking shelves with Bibles constitutes a form of symbolism as well, for although the texts are not immediately visible, it is comparable to hanging up crosses in classrooms, as most Bible covers contain a cross. Professor Thomas Berg builds off of Justice Frankfurter’s remark of “‘[w]e live by symbols’” to suggest that symbols sometimes embody real issues and challenges that people ignore at their own peril.[4] As for the content level of the Bible, it is nearly impossible to check that teachers are limiting their Bible pedagogy to history, culture, and literature. One petitioner, Dr. Lisa Wolfe, a Professor of Religion at the University of Central Oklahoma, pointed out that public school teachers are “unqualified” to teach the Bible.[5] Without a rigorously vetted curriculum or training, teachers could make sweeping sectarian assertions that unduly influence students. In her dissent in Kennedy v. Bremerton, Justice Sotomayor voices a concern that, especially for secondary education, teachers hold significant soft power as students understand that they can obtain tangible benefits like a letter of recommendation if they flatter the teacher or subscribe to their ideology.[6] Concededly, it is uncharitable to claim that all teachers will intentionally or unintentionally advance an ulterior motive, but having and teaching the Bible in the classroom does constitute symbolic speech with a substantial threat of influencing students’ religious beliefs.
Under the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act, “No governmental entity shall substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion unless it demonstrates that application of the burden is: 1. Essential to further a compelling governmental interest and 2. The least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”[7] One has to concede compelling interest, as state police powers allow the regulation of education. The mandate fails the second part of the test, though, because it is not the most narrowly tailored option to increase students’ historical and literary understanding. A professor of education at California State University, William Jeynes, cites peer-reviewed quantitative studies to prove that Biblical literacy raised students’ average GPA by 1.00 or more.[8] However, the Department of Education cannot fully access their claim that this mandate is essential to mitigate the state’s near-bottom rank of educational progress if they prove that the status quo method of Bible instruction was the problem. Teachers’ low pay and the 30 percent drop in per-pupil funding over the past ten years undoubtedly contributed to Oklahoma’s educational quality, but the existing model of teaching the Bible showed no indication of failure. Current textbooks do mention everything from the Christian colonies to religiously inspired artworks. As for Jeynes’s study, the meta-analysis does not demonstrate if the improved GPA was exclusive to the Bible.[9] Under this framework, Quran literacy or Grapes of Wrath literacy could have the same effect, thus showing that the Bible mandate is not an exclusive solution to Walter’s purported interest of improving literacy rates.
More explicitly concerning is the selection of the Bible version. For Pontotoc County, a U.S. District Court in Mississippi has ruled that the chosen Protestant King James Version (KJV) blurred the line between secular and parochial education.[10] The Oklahoma Bible Education Mandate is no different. Dr. Wolfe believed that “the most important archaeological discoveries for biblical interpretation have occurred in the years since the King James Version was translated,” and the primary petitioner, Rev. Dr. Lori Walke, believed that the KJV “contains misleading gendered language describing God, gender roles, and sexual identity.”[11] The crux of the issue is that a Bible mandate entails picking one version, yet the department can never successfully do that without promoting one sect at the expense of undermining others. This issue has no solution unless the government leaves religion to families and faith communities, where people have the autonomy to select their preferred version. In both Pierce v. Society of Sisters and Wisconsin v. Yoder, the courts deferred to family in religious upbringing.[12] Additionally, there are only two KJV version Bibles that meet Superintendent Walters’s specifications, and the cheaper option is the Greenwood Bible, also known as the “Trump Bible.” This circumstantial reasoning complicates the situation further as to Walters’s motivations for the mandate.
Having discussed how students could be the victims of this mandate, it is also noteworthy to touch on the teachers’ plight as Superintendent Walters threatened to revoke the licenses of any teacher who does not follow the mandate. According toGarcetti v. Ceballos (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court found that a public employee’s purely job-related speech is not protected by the First Amendment.[13] The case at hand, though, strikes two blows at the precedent. First, circling back to 70 O.S. § 11-103.6a Section F, teachers are first employees of the school district than they are of the state. Proponents of judicial restraint might contend that the Bible mandate is ultimately a legislative rather than judicial review, yet precedents do not support this view. In a famous dissent, Justice Frankfurter elucidated his concern that “the uncontrollable power wielded by this Court brings it very close to the most sensitive areas of public affairs,” and the court needs to exercise restraint, “lest we unwarrantably enter social and political domains wholly outside our concern.”[14] In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, though, the majority did affirm the court’s jurisprudence over the case. State departments of education, through their police powers, do have the authority to regulate public education. However, while some have statewide adoption processes where the education department selects textbooks for all districts, others, including Oklahoma (70 O.S. § 11-103.6a Section F), allow individual school districts to make their own decisions. Thus, school district leaders are justified in their protests against the mandate.
Second, a teacher’s conscientious objection to potentially violating their students’ rights should be considered, even within the limits of Garcetti. This echoes one petitioner, Ms. Bobo’s, who claims that the mandate is forcing her to “choose between preserving her teaching license and following her conscience.”[15] In their capacity as teachers, they are not necessarily indoctrinated if they were to teach the Bible, but they may reasonably believe that the dynamics are reversed for the students. In Keefe v. Adams, the 8th Circuit court required that employer mandates must be viewpoint-neutral and directly tied to job performance.[16] As previously argued, the mandate is not neutral, but even if one were to concede the first prong, the second prong does not stand as it is not within the core responsibilities of social science teachers to instruct on the Bible. Furthermore, as set out in Merriweather v. Hartop where a professor won the right to refuse gender pronouns; any mandate that could burden a teacher’s religious belief cannot survive scrutiny.[17]
Ultimately, the mandate’s flaws outweigh its purported benefits. Rather than improving educational outcomes, it risks deepening divisions within communities and undermining the principles of religious freedom. As similar mandates are considered in other states, the Oklahoma case serves as a critical reminder of the need to uphold constitutional safeguards and ensure that public education remains neutral. The resolution of this controversy in 2025 will likely have far-reaching implications, not only for Oklahoma but for the broader national conversation about the role of religion in public schools.
[1] See Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947).
[2] William Jeynes and Luke Anderson, Using the Bible as an Instructional Support in Schools, Oklahoma Education Journal (Nov. 12, 2024), 2(4), 23.
[3] “Stone v. Graham.” Oyez. Accessed March 12, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1980/80-321.
[4] Thomas Berg, Religious Displays and the Voluntary Approach to Church and State, 63, no. 1 Okla. L. Rev. (2010).
[5] See petition in Rev. Dr. Lori Walke et al. v. Ryan Walters et al., at 28. Available online at https://www.au.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Rev.-Walke-v.-Ryan-Walters-Complaint-10.17.24.pdf.
[6] See 597 U.S. 507, 562 (2022).
[7] See 51 Okl.St.Ann. § 253(B).
[8] See supra note 2, at 28.
[9] The meta-analysis cited by Jeynes finds that Biblical knowledge leads to greater academic outcomes. However, in none of the 11 studies in the meta-analysis was there a comparison between Biblical knowledge or knowledge in other religions or Shakespeare, for example. Without these experimental designs, the meta-analysis’s results could be misleading.
[10] See Herdahl v. Pontotoc County School Dist., 933 F. Supp. 582 (N.D. Miss. 1996).
[11] See supra note 5, at 28 and 5, respectively.
[12] See 268 U.S. 510 (1925) and 406 U.S. 205 (1972), respectively.
[13] See 547 U.S. 410 (2006).
[14] See West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 666 (1943).
[15] Supra note 5, at 7.
[16] See 840 F.3d 523 (8th Cir. 2016).
[17] See 992 F.3d 492 (6th Cir. 2021).