Oklahoma's Supreme Court overturns Ryan Walters' Bible-heavy Social Studies standards

The judges rejected a Christian Nationalist curriculum that downplayed systemic racism, spread election lies, and pretended the Bible was history

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The Oklahoma Supreme Court has struck down the right-wing, conspiracy-driven, and deeply religious state standards for public school social studies classes that former Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters attempted to impose on everyone. It’s yet another rebuke to Christian Nationalism and a victory for students, staffers, and church/state separation advocates who warned people well over a year ago about why these standards were a problem.

Those standards, passed last December and effectively ignored by the Republican legislature (which had the power to block them) in May, required teachers to tell kids that the 2020 election had major “discrepancies” (it did not) and that COVID originated in a Chinese lab (there was no conclusive proof of that). Students would not be required, however, to learn about George Floyd’s death or the Black Lives Matter movement.

In addition to that, the standards claimed the Bible was a foundational document, treating religious mythology as historical fact.

It was all part of Walters’ ongoing efforts to brainwash children. In fact, he quietly modified the (already awful) standards before the State Board of Education voted on them, without giving them any real time to notice what he’d done.

Why the initial state standards for social studies were a problem

You may recall that, last December, the draft standards made national news because they were full of religious indoctrination. Walters even bragged in his press release that the new standards “mention the Bible and its historical impact over 40 times.”

The new standards are among the strongest in the country: pro- America, pro-American exceptionalism, and strengthen civics and constitutional studies across every grade. They include Supt. Walters Bible curriculum recommendations and mention the Bible and its historical impact over 40 times.

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“Oklahoma is putting the Bible and the historical impact of Christianity back in school. We are demanding that our children learn the full and true context of our nation’s founding and of the principles that made and continue to make America great and exceptional,” said Walters. “I am proud that Oklahoma is taking the lead in putting President Trump’s education agenda into practice. We are presenting a successful model that others can emulate for how to restore public education and eradicate radical woke influences from our schools.

What were some of those lessons?

First graders would be taught the “purpose and meaning” of the Pledge of Allegiance “and the significance of the phrase ‘under God.’”

First graders would also have to explain the meaning of “In God we trust” and “the importance of religion to American people”… even though, if recent surveys are accurate, Americans have grown decidedly less religious over the past several decades.

Second graders would be taught “stories from Christianity that influenced the American colonists, Founders, and culture, including the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (e.g., the “Golden Rule,” the Sermon on the Mount).”

That wording suggested a strain of Christian Nationalism promoted by pseudo-historian David Barton. Many of the Founders, and certainly the foundational documents of the country, were not influenced by Christianity. And the Golden Rule was not a Jesus Original™.

That same lie made its way into 8th grade classes, too, since students would have to “Evaluate the role of Judeo-Christian ideals in supporting colonial demands for independence, as exemplified by the Bible being a frequently cited authority by America’s Founders.” (Spoiler: It wasn’t a frequently cited authority.)

For high school students, the indoctrination was even stronger. Christianity and slavery were only connected through Christian humanitarians who called for its abolition, not how the Bible was often used to justify enslavement.

It was no different in U.S. Government classes, where students would have to describe how the Constitution “was influenced by religion, morality, and the Bible as a frequently cited authority by America’s founders.”

When it came to world history, the Bible was treated as a historical text. Students were supposed to describe how Christianity worked in ancient Rome, including “the meanings and effects of Jesus of Nazareth’s words as recorded by Matthew.”

An elective class on the “History of 20th Century Totalitarianism” offered Christianity as the alternative to Communism, laughably called on students to understand “the Christian idea of the equality of souls, the Christian ideal of charity, and the renunciation of worldly wealth.” (None of those things describe the current Republican Party that is backed by the vast majority of white evangelicals.)

The standards also asked students to summarize “the political impact of President Clinton’s impeachment”… but made no mention of Donald Trump’s two impeachments.

When the standards were that egregiously right-wing, you had to wonder who wrote them. And the answer wasn’t surprising.

[Walters] said members of that 10-person [executive review] committee would include the co-founder of the conservative nonprofit PragerU, a representative from the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the president of another conservative group, the Heritage Foundation, along with multiple other right-wing voices. Only three of the people on the executive committee have ever lived in Oklahoma.

There are no Oklahoma public-school teachers or administrators on the executive committee, although there were about 75 of them who worked on updating the standards.

And yet somehow, Walters has made these standards even worse.

Why the revised state standards for social studies are an even bigger problem

In February, the State Board of Education was supposed to vote on approving those Bible-heavy standards. They considered delaying the vote since Gov. Kevin Stitt had appointed three new members to the group, but Walters urged them to hurry it along. He was in a very big rush for some reason. He insisted it was so the legislature could get their hands on it in time… even though the Board could easily have voted a month later with no consequences.

What he didn’t tell them was that he had modified the standards to add more right-wing conspiracies while removing certain elements he didn’t want students to learn about.

Walters did not send the new standards with his additions to the members of the board until 4 p.m. the day before the board’s 9:30 a.m. meeting. This did not give members enough time to read the new standards, which are around 400 pages long. Some of the members said later that they did not even realize that the new standards were different from the earlier version that they had previously reviewed.

The changes weren’t discovered until weeks after the Board of Education voted to give the standards a green light. They were first reported by the outlet NonDoc.

What had Walters changed? Consider a U.S. History course for 9th graders.

The initial version of the standards listed a handful of things that students needed to understand from the first Trump administration: changes in foreign policy, the impact of George Floyd’s death, the response to COVID, issues related to the 2020 election (presumably including the events of January 6).

The revised version that got approved was much more specific—and much more conspiratorial. It said COVID originated in a Chinese lab, insisted there were “discrepancies” in the 2020 election, falsely claimed there were security risks with mail-in ballots and “sudden batch dumps,” etc.

Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of “bellwether county” trends.

The initial version had a section on the “challenges and accomplishments” of Joe Biden’s presidency that included economic recovery after COVID and the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

The revised version only focused on the challenges, not the accomplishments:

The initial version asked students to compare Judeo-Christian beliefs to Communism by highlighting the “Christian idea of the equality of souls, the Christian ideal of charity, and the renunciation of worldly wealth.” (Yes, that’s incredibly ironic given the current administration.)

The revised version removed that section entirely.

None of these changes were made public prior to them being voted on, and Walters didn’t mention them when he was pressuring the Board to cast their votes in favor of it.

If those standards went into effect, they would also create a different problem for public schools: Finding textbooks that covered these topics.

[Democratic Sen. Mark] Mann pointed out that standards which deviate too far from established facts can make it hard for textbook companies to write textbooks for the state.

“When you start deviating from what is the norm and the truth and start coming up with your own truths and throwing in the Bible and election denying and all that, there’s going to come a point where Oklahoma won’t have a textbook publisher willing to align to our standards and sell a book in Oklahoma because it’s very expensive to align,” Mann said. “But when you’ve got Oklahoma, Texas — other states — and they’re redoing their standards, it’s not a huge alignment if you’re sticking to facts.”

Oklahoma Republicans refused to block these standards from taking effect

The easiest way to prevent these standards from going into effect would have been for the legislature to reject Walters’ ideologically driven agenda. They had the power to do that!

State law says that, “By adoption of a joint resolution, the Legislature shall approve the standards, disapprove the standards in whole or in part, amend the standards in whole or in part or disapprove the standards in whole or in part with instructions to the State Board of Education.”

If the joint resolution is vetoed by the governor and the veto hasn’t been overridden, the standards are deemed to be approved. The same would apply if the Legislature fails to adopt a joint resolution within 30 legislative days following the submission of the standards.”

But when there was a resolution to block the standards from getting approved, Oklahoma Republicans just looked the other way:

Republicans who objected to the process the standards went through filed a resolution last week to block it, but that resolution didn’t make the floor agenda on Tuesday.

“Following a lengthy conversation Monday, the caucus was not on board with rejecting the standards based on the process in which they were presented to the board of education,” Sen. Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton’s office told KOCO 5 in a statement. “The standards are not a legislative obligation, and the curriculum is developed by the State Department of Education.”

That meant the standards were automatically approved. Beginning this past fall, students were going to be lied to because Ryan Walters cared more about appeasing Donald Trump than preparing students for the future.

The simple fact is that college admissions counselors would have to think twice before admitting Oklahoma high schoolers because there was no guarantee they would have the proper history background to succeed in those college-level classes.

Remember that this wasn’t just one bad move by Walters. It was the latest in a long series of them.

Walters, after all, is the guy who requested (then canceled) bids to purchase 55,000 Trump bibles for public school classrooms, then purchased 500 Trump bibles for use in Advanced Placement Government classes anyway. (Even though there’s no requirement for teachers to use the Bible in the classroom, Walters has repeatedly pushed them to do exactly that, many superintendents have rejected the idea, and there’s an ongoing lawsuit to prevent Walters’ plans from being enacted.)

But these social studies standards, now riddled with right-wing conspiracies, were just another way for him to inject Christianity where it didn’t belong. Walters could pretend this wasn’t about inflicting his religion and political views upon children, but his public statements all pointed in that direction. Instead of openly saying he wanted to convert kids, he just claimed Christianity was intertwined with American history, giving him a secular rationale for his religious goals. Instead of saying he wanted to brainwash kids with Fox News lies, his office said it was all about educating them and getting kids to “think for themselves”:

“The left has hijacked our education system. We have teachers outright teaching our kids to hate our country and our leaders. Not in Oklahoma. In teaching our standards, we believe in giving the next generation the ability to think for themselves rather than accepting radical positions on the election outcome as it is reported by the media.”

It’s a lot easier to get kids to believe lies when you refuse to ever tell them the truth.

What the lawsuit said

When the standards went into effect, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice issued a statement condemning the new standards and saying they planned to take action.

That’s what they did in July with their lawsuit, representing an impressive and broad range of Plaintiffs who argued that Walters’ standards violated their religious freedom. They went on to say that they “oppose their tax dollars being spent on education standards that promote religion and inaccuracies.”

There were a litany of laws that Walters violated, they said:

• The standards voted on by the Board of Education were never released to the public in advance (since Walters modified them without telling anyone), violating the state’s Open Meeting Act.

• By voting on standards without knowing their content, the Board violated a law requiring it to have authority over academic standards.

• The standards forced teachers to spread lies, violating a law requiring information taught to children to be accurate.

• Spreading Christian propaganda to children violated a law requiring age-appropriate standards.

• By promoting Christianity above other faiths and no faith, the standards violated the Oklahoma Constitution.

The lawsuit asked the court to invalidate the new standards, prevent Walters and his allies from implementing them in the coming school year, and continue using the old standards until a new set (consistent with the law) could be approved.

To make their point, the lawsuit used many of Walters’ old comments against him, specifically citing his repeated admissions that he was trying to shove Christianity into public schools.

In an April 1, 2025 social-media post, Walters stated, “Oklahoma is standing strong, ensuring students have access to the Bible as a vital cornerstone of our history and values,” and depicted Oklahoma as participating in a “movement to restore our nation’s moral foundation”… In an April 29, 2025 social-media post, Walters stated, “As part of these standards, the Bible will now be recognized as a foundational text, helping students understand its undeniable influence on our nation’s history and values”…

In a May 13, 2025 interview with One America News, Walters was asked, “Are you bringing the Word? Are you bringing God? Are you bringing Jesus back to the classroom in Oklahoma?” Walters responded, “We are”… In a June 2, 2025 interview with Real America’s Voice, Walters stated, “We want our kids to… understand where this country’s values came from. So, we… increased the standards dramatically. We put the Bible back in”… In a June 3, 2025 interview with News 9, Walters stated, “I will not stop fighting… for our kids to understand the Judeo-Christian values that the country was founded on”… In a June 4, 2025 interview with Fox News, Walters stated that “[w]e cannot tolerate” those who “have taken the Judeo-Christian values . . . out of our schools”…

In a June 6, 2025 interview with KOTV, Walters stated that the United States Supreme Court had “lo[st] their mind” by “driving God and prayer out of school,” that “[w]e’re going to have prayer in school in Oklahoma,” and that “[w]e’re going to have the Bible in school in Oklahoma”… On June 9, 2025, Walters reposted on social media an article in which he was quoted as saying, “We are a country that was built with Judeo-Christian values… You don’t have America if you don’t have that Christian foundation… We brought it back to our schools.”

They also pointed out that many historians don’t treat the Bible as accurate history. It contains “numerous inconsistencies,” the accounts of certain characters were “written long after the apparent settings they describe,” and scholars generally treat certain biblical accounts as “literary works that were written to serve ideological and theological goals—not to document literal history.”

Some Christians, for example, hold the religious belief that the Bible is historically factual, while numerous other Christians and non-Christians do not… The 2025 Standards thus take sides in a religious debate about how to interpret and utilize a particular religious text.

This wasn’t just about stopping Walters from injecting his religion into public schools. It was about preventing money from being spent implementing these new standards. Remember: Schools would have to buy new textbooks and material to align with Walters’ Christian propaganda campaign. Teachers would have to be trained in the new material. And, of course, taxpayer funds would be used to have these standards taught in classrooms.

The lead Plaintiff in this case—Rev. Dr. Mitch Randall v. Ryan Walters—is the Rev. Dr. Mitch Randall, a Baptist minister. And he took aim at the variety of ways Walters’ campaign violated everything he stands for:

As a Christian, I object to Oklahoma’s new social studies standards that require teachers to deceive students by presenting inaccurate information as fact. To reduce the Bible to a history book—rather than treating it as a theological text – does a disservice to public school students, their families, their teachers and those who consider the Bible to be a book of faith. As a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, I am especially bothered by my tax dollars supporting state-mandated religious instruction. It’s a painful reminder of the forced religious proselytization my family members experienced in Native American boarding schools in Oklahoma. I urge the court to protect religious freedom for all Oklahomans and prevent implementation of these new standards.

Keep in mind that, by one measure, Oklahoma ranks near the bottom (49!) of the worst states in the country when it comes to education. Ryan Walters wasn’t going to stop until his state ended up even lower on the list.

What the Oklahoma Supreme Court said in September

In September, the Oklahoma Supreme Court voted 5-2 to put a temporary block on the Walters curriculum while that lawsuit continued making its way through the legal process. (Two other justices recused themselves from this case for unknown reasons. One dissenting judge said he preferred to wait for lower courts to weigh in before the Supreme Court did.)

With that temporary block, issued right as the school year was beginning, the Court said no public money could be used to “enforce or implement the 2025 Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies.” Furthermore, until they issued their final ruling, schools had to use the (non-controversial) 2019 version of the standards.

The fact that no public funds could be spent implementing the new curriculum was a big deal because state legislators had allocated $33 million towards creating assessments, conducting trainings, and purchasing textbooks.

Perhaps more importantly, the Oklahoma Supreme Court made it clear they would hear this matter directly rather than wait for the litigation to play out in lower courts.

What the Oklahoma Supreme Court is saying now

Today, that same Supreme Court said the way Walters shoved these 2025 standards through did indeed violate the state’s Open Meeting Act. Neither the State Board of Education nor the public were told that the standards Walters wanted the Board to vote on were different from the ones they had read in an earlier draft. Furthermore, Board members were given only 17 hours’ notice that they would be voting on the newer standards, violating another element of state law.

As a result, “the 2025 Standards are not enforceable, and the applicable 2019 Standards remain in force.”

We conclude the notice of the agenda for the 2025 Standards violated 25 O.S.2021, §311(A)(9) of the Open Meeting Act when the public body used the agenda items in the notice for the purpose of adopting fundamentally different substantive Standards not placed on the notice of the agenda. The Board’s notice of the agenda was not sufficient to apprise the public of the substantive standards being considered for adoption.

It was a 5-4 decision, with two recusals. (Two of the dissenters came from the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals.)

In case you’re wondering, the dissenters didn’t even necessarily disagree with the ruling. Two of them said they just didn’t have the “complete factual record” in front of them because this case didn’t go through the lower courts, and so they were essentially dissenting on principle. Another basically made that same argument with slightly different reasoning.

Americans United called it a “victory for religious freedom, church-state separation, public education, and government transparency.”

“Today’s decision will ensure that Oklahoma families – not politicians – get to decide how and when their children engage with religion,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United. “These new social studies standards violated students’ and families’ religious freedom by promoting one version of Christianity and advancing Christian Nationalist disinformation. Not on our watch. Public schools are not Sunday schools.”

For what it’s worth, the guy who replaced Walters, Lindel Fields, has already said he plans to review the social students standards—but the right way: with public input and expert guidance. His office issued this brief statement in response to today’s decision:

“The Oklahoma State Department of Education respects the ruling of the Oklahoma Supreme Court regarding the 2025 Academic Standards for Social Studies. In accordance with the Court’s decision, the 2019 Standards will remain in effect until new standards are properly adopted by the State Board of Education and approved by the Legislature.

We are committed to transparency and adherence to the Open Meeting Act as we begin the work of developing new standards. Oklahoma families, teachers, and students deserve confidence in both the processes and the products from the State Department of Education.”

Walters himself hasn’t weighed in yet. A few months ago, he resigned his position to become CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a right-wing group that aims to destroy teachers’ unions. As of this writing, his most recent social media post is one in which he shares a letter he wrote reminding teachers that “Saying Merry Christmas is not radical.”

As I wrote before, this fight was never just about one set of social studies standards. It was about whether Oklahoma would let its public schools be turned into indoctrination camps for Christian Nationalism and political disinformation.

Walters’ attempt to erase references to the existence of systemic racism, spread right-wing lies, and elevate the Bible to the level of a founding document was never about “education.” It was about weaponizing ignorance to churn out a generation of children who can’t tell the difference between history and propaganda. The Supreme Court’s decision today puts a stop to that, albeit on legal technicalities rather than on the merits of the standards.

It’s still good news. Oklahoma is struggling with underfunded schools, teacher shortages, and poor educational outcomes. The last thing they needed was for schools to be further sabotaged by a superintendent more interested in serving right-wing ideology than students.

That guy is history, and as of today, so is his biggest project.

Good riddance.

The state’s Supreme Court once again stepped in to save the voters from themselves.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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