Former Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters tried to spend millions of Oklahoma taxpayer dollars to put a Bible in every fifth- through twelfth-grade public-school classroom in the state. And he tried to force Oklahoma public-school teachers to incorporate the Bible into their everyday lessons. In June and July 2024, Superintendent Walters laid out this Bible Education Mandate in two official memoranda to all Oklahoma public school districts. In September and October 2024, Superintendent Walters and the Oklahoma State Department of Education took steps toward spending $3 million in state funds to buy 55,000 King James Version Bibles and send them to every school district in the state.
On October 17, 2024, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of Oklahoma on behalf of 32 Oklahomans—parents, students, teachers, LGBTQ+ people, indigenous people, nonreligious and religious folks, and clergy members.
Our suit argued that Superintendent Walters and the State Department of Education grossly exceeded their authority by issuing the Bible Education Mandate and attempting to use state funds to purchase Bibles—and that they illegally ignored Oklahoma procedural requirements along the way. Further, the religious-freedom provisions of Oklahoma’s Constitution prohibit spending state funds to support religious items or one particular religious tradition. Spending millions of dollars on King James Version Bibles—a Protestant version of the Bible—plainly would have violated the Oklahoma Constitution and its promise of church–state separation.
We asked the court to declare Walters’ Bible Mandate unlawful and unenforceable and to prohibit expenditures of state funds to implement the Mandate, including by purchasing Bibles for public schools.
On March 10, 2025, the Court put on hold Walters’ attempts to spend state funds to buy Bibles and supplemental instructional materials that integrate the Bible. Then, on March 12, 2025, we asked the Court to halt a scheme by Walters to distribute to public schools donated copies of entertainer Lee Greenwood and Donald Trump’s “God Bless the USA Bibles.”
In July 2025, Walters ‘demanded’ that the Court allow him to purchase Bibles and Bible-based instructional materials ahead of the new schoolyear. AU filed another brief opposing Walters’ demand.
Walters resigned from office in September 2025. Thankfully, his successor, Superintendent Lindel Fields, abandoned Walters’ attempts to incorporate the Bible into the public-school curriculum, to place Bibles in classrooms, and to buy Bibles and biblical-instructional materials with state tax dollars and distribute them to public schools. On November 24, 2025, the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed our case as moot, confirming that Walters’ policies had been “resci[nded] and nullifi[ed].”
