Oklahoma City In an effort to prevent the state’s top education official from requiring schools to include the Bible in lesson plans for children in grades 5 through 12, a group of Oklahoma parents, educators, and clergy filed a lawsuit Thursday.
In addition, the complaint requests the Oklahoma Supreme Court to prevent Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters from using $3 million to buy Bibles to fulfill his mandate.
According to the lawsuit, the mandate favors one religion over another by mandating the use of a Protestant edition of the Bible and includes using public funds to promote religion, both of which are violations of the Oklahoma Constitution. Additionally, it claims that Walters and the state Board of Education lack the power to mandate the use of educational resources.
Plaintiff Erika Wright, the founder of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition and a parent of two school-age children, claimed in a statement that she and her husband have the exclusive authority to determine how and when their children are taught about the Bible and religious doctrine. “Politicians and public school administrators have no business getting involved in these private affairs.”
A number of civil rights organizations, including the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, are representing the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit also points out that the State Department of Education’s original “request for proposal” to buy the Bibles seems to have been specifically designed to resemble Bibles that former President Donald Trump has praised and that retail for $59.99 apiece. State buying officials later requested changes to the RFP.
This is the second lawsuit that has been filed in Oklahoma to contest Walters’ requirement. A Locust Grove man filed another case in June, and it is still pending in Mayes County.
In a message uploaded to his X account, Walters declared that he would “never back down to the woke mob. “Walters remarked, “The simple fact is that until the 1960s, it was the norm in America to understand how the Bible has impacted our nation, in its proper historical context, and its removal has coincided with a precipitous decline in American schools.”
Former public school teacher Walters was elected in 2022 on a platform of opposing “woke ideology,” removing “radical leftists” from classrooms, and prohibiting books from school libraries.
