OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A group of Oklahoma public school parents, teachers and ministers filed a lawsuit Thursday to stop the state's top education official from forcing schools to include the Bible in lesson plans for students in grades 5 through with 12.
The lawsuit filed in the Oklahoma Supreme Court also asks the court to block Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters from spending $3 million on the purchase of Bibles to support his mandate.
The lawsuit claims the mandate violates the Oklahoma Constitution because it involves spending public money to support religion and favor one religion over another by requiring the use of a Protestant version of the Bible. It also claims that Walters and the state board of education do not have the authority to require the use of instructional materials.
“As parents, my husband and I have the sole responsibility of deciding how and when our children learn about the Bible and religious teachings,” said plaintiff Erika Wright, founder of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition and parent of two school-age children. a statement. “It is not the role of any politician or public school to intervene in these personal matters.”
The plaintiffs are represented by several civil rights groups, including the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law & Justice.
The lawsuit also notes that the original “request for proposal” released by the Department of Education to purchase the Bibles appears to have been carefully tailored to the Bibles approved by former President Donald Trump and sold for $59 .99 each. The RFP was later amended at the request of state purchasing officials.
It is the second lawsuit filed in Oklahoma challenging Walters' mandate. Another lawsuit filed in June by a Locust Grove man is currently pending in Mayes County.
Walters said in a statement on his account on X that he will “never back down from the woke mob.”
“The simple fact is that understanding how the Bible has influenced our nation, in its proper historical context, was the norm in America until the 1960s, and its removal coincided with a precipitous decline in American schools,” Walters wrote.
Walters, a former public school teacher who was elected in 2022, ran on a platform of fighting “woke ideology,” banning books from school libraries and ridding himself of “radical leftists” who he said were indoctrinating children in classrooms.
