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Dozens of of parents, teachers and faith leaders are suing Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters for mandating Bible instruction in classrooms. The plaintiffs are urging the Oklahoma Supreme Court to halt his office’s controversial directive and to prevent the use of state funds to procure Bibles for that purpose.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, argues that by issuing the rule, Walters violated a state law and that budgeting $3 million in state funds to purchase the Bibles goes against the state Constitution’s religious freedom provisions:
The Mandate interferes with the parents’ ability to direct the religious and moral upbringing of their children. The children themselves face coercive instruction on religion in their public schools that is contrary to their own beliefs. The teachers must present to their students religious doctrines to which the teachers and many students do not subscribe, or face losing their teaching licenses. And the spending of state funds to purchase Bibles diverts the tax payments of all the adult petitioners from proper uses to the support of a single religious tradition.
The suit names Walters, the Oklahoma State Education Department and the State Board of Education, as well as other government officials, as defendants. Walters has not addressed the suit explicitly in public comments but did post on X on Thursday that he is “proud to bring back the Bible to every classroom” and “will never back down to the woke mob, no matter what tactic they use.”
The complaint adds to a laundry list of lawsuits that Walters has faced as Oklahoma’s top school official. (The Oklahoman puts the number at 15 or more.) Local outlet KTUL reported last week that Walters’ office has racked up at least $100,000 in legal fees over the lawsuits. The suit filed this week is the second to contest the state’s classroom Bible mandate.
Since becoming state superintendent last year, Walters has courted controversy by using his position to further a right-wing Christian nationalist agenda and to inflame culture war grievances. His directive, issued in June, to require Bible instruction in Oklahoma classrooms has sparked particularly intense criticism, and several school district superintendents have said they would not comply. In announcing the policy, Walters said it was “academic malpractice not to be teaching the Bible’s influence on American history.”
Earlier this month, his office again came under fire for soliciting bids to supply Bibles for classroom use with such specific criteria that only one version on the market seemed able to fulfill it: Donald Trump’s infamous “God bless the USA” Bible.