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Quick Take
Oklahoma’s state superintendent ordered public schools to incorporate the Bible as “an instructional support into the curriculum.” But social media posts have shared the inaccurate claim that “Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana all ordered that the Bible be taught in public schools.” Louisiana and Texas haven’t issued such an order.
Full Story
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction, issued a directive on June 27 that all the state’s public schools “incorporate the Bible … as an instructional support into the curriculum,” the New York Times reported.
Walters said the Bible is “a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” the Times reported. “Every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom, and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom,” Walters said.
Walters’ directive and other recent efforts by conservative-led states to introduce religion into public schools — which are facing legal challenges — have generated attention on social media. But some posts mischaracterize what changes have been made to public school curricula and where these changes have taken place.
A July 11 Threads post misleadingly claimed, “States of Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana all ordered that the Bible be taught in public schools.” Similar posts have been shared on Facebook, including a post that shows a group of students praying in a classroom.
Conservative leaders in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas have all sought to expand the role of religion in public education, but only Oklahoma’s education department has ordered that the Bible be taught in classrooms.
Ten Commandments in Louisiana
Two weeks before Walters’ order in Oklahoma, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law a requirement that classrooms in every public school and state-funded university display the text of the Ten Commandments by Jan. 1, 2025.
The law requires that the posters be at least 11 inches by 14 inches and that “the text of the Ten Commandments shall be the central focus of the poster.” The posters will also include a lengthy statement intended to provide context for the display, stating, “The Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.” The posters will be purchased with donations, and public schools are not required to spend money on the displays.
A suit challenging the law has been filed by some Louisiana parents represented by the ACLU and other civil liberties groups on the grounds that it is unconstitutional and a violation of the separation of church and state.
They argue that the law violates U.S. Supreme Court precedent. A Kentucky statute similar to the one passed in Louisiana was the subject of the 1980 Supreme Court case, Stone v. Graham. The superintendent of Kentucky schools, James Graham, was sued by parents for an order that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom. The high court decided against Graham, ruling that the poster violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution — which says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” — and that displays of the Ten Commandments in classrooms were “plainly religious in nature.”
In an interview with NewsNation at the Republican National Convention on July 18, Landry said, “I think this is one of the cases where the court has it wrong. And so here is the question: If the Supreme Court has something wrong, why would you not want that to be corrected?”
Landry also said, “I would submit that maybe if the Ten Commandments were hanging on [would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks’] wall in the school that he was in, maybe he wouldn’t have taken a shot” at former President Donald Trump.
While Landry wants to display the Ten Commandments in Louisiana’s classrooms, the state of Louisiana has not “ordered that the Bible be taught in public schools,” as the social media posts claim.
Proposed Curriculum in Texas
In May, the Texas Education Agency introduced elementary school materials that include biblical and other religious references for public review and comment. The proposed materials include lessons on biblical stories and discussions about how early American political figures were shaped by their religious beliefs. The materials contain references to several religions, though Judeo-Christian religious material appears most frequently. The Texas Tribune reported that “districts will have the option of whether to use the materials, but will be incentivized to do so with up to $60 per student in additional funding.”
The 2024 platform of the Texas Republican Party, adopted days before the new educational materials were unveiled, includes a call for the state board of education to mandate teaching of the Bible. But no such guidelines have been put in place in Texas, contrary to the claim in the social media posts.
The state education board will vote on the proposed elementary school materials in November. If approved, the changes would be implemented in August 2025.
Last year, the Texas State Senate approved legislation that would place copies of the Ten Commandments in classrooms — similar to the order in Louisiana — but the measure didn’t receive a final vote before the end of the legislative session.
Challenges to the Oklahoma Directive
Before the Oklahoma superintendent’s recent directive ordering that public schools incorporate the Bible into curricula, Walters was a proponent of state funding for the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which supporters hoped would be the first religious charter school in the U.S.
However, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state’s charter school contract with the online Catholic school violated “Oklahoma statutes, the Oklahoma Constitution, and the Establishment Clause.” Justice James Winchester wrote that public schools must be nonsectarian, but “St. Isidore will evangelize the Catholic faith as part of its school curriculum while sponsored by the State,” which violates the Establishment Clause.
The Establishment Clause has been at the center of many of the most significant Supreme Court decisions regulating the role of religion in schools. The 1962 case Engel v. Vitale banned school prayer for violating the Establishment Clause, even if the prayer was optional and nondenominational. In 1963, the court upheld Engel in Abington School District v. Schempp, when it decided that mandatory Bible readings in public schools are unconstitutional.
Michael Klarman, a professor of American legal history at Harvard Law School, told us in an email, “It’s pretty clear to me that these states are presenting the current [Supreme Court], dominated by conservative Catholics, with an opportunity to reconsider” the Engel and Schempp decisions.
Walters’ recent order for schools to incorporate the Bible calls for “immediate and strict compliance.” But a spokesperson for the Oklahoma attorney general’s office said that the superintendent does not have the power to issue a memo mandating that content must be included in the curriculum, NBC News reported.
Under current law, “public schools can include the Bible in discussions of secular subjects like history or literature,” but the Bible cannot be used “as a form of religious instruction” in the classroom, Rachel F. Moran, a law professor at Texas A&M University School of Law, told us in an email.
According to Oklahoma law, individual school districts can determine what instructional material is used in the classroom. “School districts shall exclusively determine the instruction, curriculum, reading lists and instructional materials and textbooks, subject to any applicable provisions or requirements as set forth in law, to be used in meeting the subject matter standards,” the law states.
Andrew Spiropoulos, a professor of constitutional law at Oklahoma City University School of Law, told us in an email, “Some public school districts will likely allege that the state department of education does not possess sufficient statutory authority over school curricula to issue these particular directives.”
As of July 19, none of Oklahoma’s schools had agreed to follow the state superintendent’s directive, saying instead that they would follow “the current regulations for academic standards which include not having a Bible in every class,” Oklahoma City news station KFOR reported.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
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Brown, Dylan. “No school districts have announced following Bible mandate, OSDE responds.” KFOR. 19 Jul 2024.
CBS News. “Lawsuit challenges Louisiana law requiring classrooms to display Ten Commandments.” 24 Jun 2024.
Constitution Annotated. First Amendment. Congress.gov.
Downen, Robert. “Bill requiring Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms fails in House after missing crucial deadline.” Texas Tribune. 24 May 2023.
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Klarman, Michael. Professor of American legal history, Harvard Law School. Email to FactCheck.org. 18 Jul 2024.
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