The Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board voted unanimously against an application Monday for a virtual Jewish charter school, citing the state supreme court’s 2024 ruling that public funding for a religious school would violate state law. As expected, some board members voiced support for Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation.

“I think our hands are tied,” said Board Member Damon Gardenhire, who said he didn’t see much difference between Ben Gamla’s application and a now-closed Native American charter school that featured a “spiritual component.” 

In a statement responding to the vote, Brett Farley, a member of the proposed school’s board, said organizers plan to challenge the decision in federal court. “Oklahoma families should have the freedom to choose schools that best meet their children’s needs — without losing strong options simply because they are faith-based,” he said.

The Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board is expected to deny an application for a Jewish charter school Monday, but will likely welcome organizers of the school to take them to court.

Peter Deutsch, founder of the Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, and a former Democratic congressman, made his pitch for the school in January, saying that he aims to bring “a rigorous, values-driven education” to Jewish parents in Oklahoma.

“I anticipate that our board would like to grant them the application,” Brian Shellem, the board chair, told The 74. “But we can’t snub our nose at the court either.”

He means the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which ruled against the nation’s first Catholic charter school in 2024. That decision still stands after the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked over that case last year. The charter board’s likely denial of Ben Gamla’s application is expected to spark another lawsuit, pitting against those who say it would violate the Constitution’s prohibition on establishing a religion. With a case over a proposed Christian charter in Tennessee already in federal court and another religious school in Colorado founded to test the same legal question, there’s little doubt that the nation’s highest court will eventually settle the debate.

“It is hard for me to imagine the court doesn’t take the issue again when it comes to it,” said Derek Black, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina. But after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself in the case over St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, resulting in the 4-4 tie, the justices likely in favor of religious charters, he said, “would want a case that was very strong.”

‘Pray and hear Scripture’

So far, the only case to watch is in Tennessee. Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville, a nonprofit that wants to open a K-8 Christian charter school, sued the Knox County school board because the district wouldn’t accept its letter of intent to apply. State law prohibits charter schools from being religious. 

“Students will begin to develop biblical literacy in kindergarten and begin taking catechism lessons by third grade,” according to Wilberforce Academy’s request for a quick ruling in the case. “And they will pray and hear Scripture together in a school assembly every morning.”

As St. Isidore did before them, Wilberforce argues that the nonprofit is a “private actor” and that approving its charter application would not turn it into a government entity.

The Knox County board told the court that it will “most likely” not take a position on the legality of Wilberforce’s argument. On Thursday, the board rejected asking state education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds to consider granting Wilberforce Academy a waiver so they can open the Christian school.

The Knox board, however, also said the issue of religious charter schools “deserves a thorough examination by the federal courts.” 

Judge Charles Atchley Jr, for the Eastern District of Tennessee, thinks so, too. Last week, he allowed a group of Knox County parents and religious leaders, who oppose Wilberforce’s application, . 

The case, he wrote, has the “potential to reshape First Amendment jurisprudence in the educational context” and it wouldn’t serve the court or parties involved to not have “vigorous advocacy on both sides.”

Amanda Collins, a retired Knox County school psychologist, is among those who have signed up to fight against Wilberforce Academy. She has two children still in the district and one who graduated in 2024. She grew concerned about Wilberforce Academy when she learned the organization didn’t have a history of operating charter schools in the state and feels its attorneys are using the district to “merely force an issue up the ladder to the Supreme Court.”

“In Tennessee, we have plenty of things that are underfunded,” she said. “We don’t need to be wasting our local Knox County taxpayer money on somebody’s agenda that is not intended to promote the education safety and wellness of our public school students.” 

‘The clear constitutional boundary’

Another school that could spark a lawsuit over public funds for religious schools is Colorado’s , which advertises that it offers students a “Christian foundation.” 

The school operates “pretty much just like a charter school” said Ken Witt, executive director of Education reEnvisioned, the board of cooperative educational services, or BOCES, that contracted with the school. 

As , emails between the attorney for the Pueblo County district, which allowed the school to open within its boundaries, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative law firm, suggest the school was intentionally founded to test the legal argument over whether public schools can practice religion. 

After threatening to withhold state funds because of the school’s religious mission, the Colorado Department of Education funded Riverstone’s 31 students. But the state is also conducting a , which could take another year, before deciding whether it can legally provide money to the school. In the meantime, Riverstone had to close its building last week because of health and safety violations. It’s unclear whether students are learning remotely or in another facility in the meantime.

For now, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat running for governor, hasn’t issued an opinion on Riverstone, but his views on St. Isidore, the Oklahoma school, were clear. Last year, he in opposing state funding for the school.

In , he urged the Supreme Court “to preserve the clear constitutional boundary that protects both religious liberty and the integrity of our public education system.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican who is also running for governor, made a similar argument about St. Isidore before both the Oklahoma and U.S. supreme courts. 

But that’s where both he and Weiser split with the Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. In his , Skrmetti states that categorically excluding faith-based schools from public charter programs violates parents’ rights to freely exercise their religion.

To Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the conservative Manhattan Institute, it’s a matter of equity. Higher-income families can move into wealthier neighborhoods or pay private school tuition, he wrote in a on the Wilberforce case. The state, he added, already funds religious schools through education savings accounts. 

“But families who rely on charter schools are told that their options must be secular,” he wrote. 

Black, with the University of South Carolina, said the issue comes down to who authorized the school to begin with. In both Oklahoma and Tennessee, either local or state boards approve charter applications.

“That explicit state involvement, to me, makes it clear that state action is involved,” he said, “and thus the Establishment Clause applies.”

“It’s not my kids that I worry about,” she said. “This is their opportunity to be a light. Their mission field is the public school.”

For many other Ohio parents, that’s a problem. 

Since he was 8, Cherie Khumprakob’s son, now 11, has been receiving written invitations from classmates to join them at LifeWise. She found one in his backpack.

“He hates getting these notes from his friends and having to tell them ‘No’ repeatedly,” said Khumprakob, who lives in the Columbus area. “Training kids to pressure their friends into religious activities while at public school, during school hours, crosses a line.”

The opposing views illustrate the tension in Ohio and other states where LifeWise is rapidly expanding. The organization expects to serve close to 100,000 kids in 34 states this school year. It has 1,600 employees and runs its own fleet of eye-catching red buses. 

Founded in 2018, LifeWise is the most visible group behind a movement to spread off-campus religious instruction during the school day. Since 2024, the nonprofit has successfully lobbied for legislation in Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas mandating that districts allow students to attend LifeWise or similar programs. Some say the requirements violate the separation of church and state. 

“That’s a big shift,” said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “This whole mandatory aspect is historically something different.” 

In a moment when Republicans are fighting to hang the 10 Commandments on classroom walls and squeeze biblical passages into reading lessons, LifeWise has taken these programs in a more evangelical direction. The organization faces pushback from parents and district staff who think Bible study should be relegated to afterschool hours. LifeWise programs that reward students with items like candy and encourage kids to recruit their friends have proven particularly divisive. 

But those are the strategies LifeWise recommends as a way to increase participation. “Send students back to school with ‘Invite a Friend’ flyers,” urges a on “boosting enrollment.” A says treats are “fun incentives” that are meant to foster a “positive and engaging learning environment.”

“Most students who enjoy a sport, activity or program will talk about it with their friends and encourage them to give it a try as well,” said LifeWise spokeswoman Christine Czernejewski. “Lifewise is no different.”

The 74 found examples of financial transactions between districts and LifeWise that could create the appearance of promoting the program. Especially in Ohio, LifeWise often enjoys strong support from school officials; one superintendent warned staff to avoid such activity while the district was “under the radar.” 

Supporters argue that LifeWise and similar classes respect the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause because they require parent permission, don’t meet on school grounds and aren’t supposed to rely on school resources for support.

Some districts are putting “tacks on the road so the big red bus loses air in the tires” just because the program teaches the Bible, said Jeremy Dys, senior counsel with First Liberty Institute, a law firm specializing in religious freedom cases.

The 46,000-student Columbus, Ohio, district from sending kids back to school with any “materials, snacks, clothing, candies, trinkets or other items.” Then the legislature amended the law to say districts can’t prevent organizations from distributing educational materials, but have some discretion over limiting non-educational items like treats. For now, Dys, who represents LifeWise, is waiting to see whether the new restrictions interfere with the program. 

“There’s just a lot of animosity and hostility towards religion,” he said. But recent Supreme Court decisions, like one siding with a football coach who held mid-field prayers and another allowing parents to opt their children out of hearing LGBTQ-themed story books, have expanded religious influence at school. “The courts … have basically been telling school districts, ‘Cool it.’ ”

In total, 16 states require districts to allow students to participate in religious studies during school hours, but a few, like Pennsylvania and New York, have had such laws on the books for years. Some states aren’t ready to take that leap. Legislation requiring districts to release students stalled this year in , and . 

At an education subcommittee hearing in February, Georgia state Rep. David Clark, a Republican running for lieutenant governor, said the programs could solve one of the most pressing issues facing public schools — enrollment loss.

“We have thousands of students leaving public schools. It could be private school; it could be home school,” he said. “I think this … protects our public schools, because it allows parents, [if] they want the religious studies, they can sign their kid up.” 

Clark alluded to data suggesting that attendance increases and behavior improves in schools with LifeWise programs. The findings, from a sponsored by , are frequently cited by LifeWise founder Joel Penton and officials who to school boards across the country. 

But some researchers say the report’s conclusions overstate the program’s benefits. Charles Riedesel, a computer scientist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, called the work “shoddy.” For one, it included the COVID year, a time when states changed how they tracked attendance because so many students were learning remotely.

‘Blows my mind’

Even though the legislation failed in Georgia, LifeWise still has programs in about six districts statewide, and church leaders are .

On a sunny Friday morning in October roughly an hour outside Atlanta, about 20 Cartersville Elementary fifth graders piled onto a LifeWise bus for a short drive to a local church. Ebby McCoy said she was missing a computer class, but likes how the LifeWise lessons “go a bit deeper” into the Bible than what she learns in church.

Former elementary school teacher Danielle Ruff energetically led the kids through a fast-paced lesson on the 10 plagues that the Bible says God inflicted on Egypt for keeping the Jews enslaved. As she spoke, students connected puzzle pieces linking the disasters in order — water turning to blood, frogs infesting homes and gnats “biting them like crazy,” Ruff said. 

“The next set of plagues only happen to the Egyptians. They don’t happen to the Israelites,” she said. “It blows my mind every time.”

Jason Morrow, a LifeWise board member, was among several volunteers on hand to help kids locate Bible verses. He called the program a “touchpoint during the week” that teaches his daughter, one of the fifth graders, that faith is “not just a Sunday weekend thing.” 

But Clay Willis, who works at the church hosting the program, said LifeWise leaders try to respect the school’s boundaries. For one, they don’t hand out candy. 

“If we sugar them up, that’s not the best way to serve the teachers,” he said. 

‘It’s insulting’

Supporters of LifeWise and similar programs point to a 1952 Supreme Court decision, , that legalized the practice. But the fact that these programs pull kids out of school during the day offers critics their leading argument. During a meeting last fall, Amber Skinner, a board member in the Worthington, Ohio, district, near Columbus, said checking students in and out of school for their LifeWise session is disruptive and eats up staff time. 

“Teachers who are funded with taxpayer dollars” spend time providing a lot of “hands-on assistance” to elementary students who need help signing themselves out, she said. 

The classes, usually held once or twice a week, often coincide with non-core offerings like art and music. Some educators think students are losing out on important material. 

Alan Limke, a retired STEM teacher from the Milton Union district, outside Dayton, kept a list of the lessons that students missed every Tuesday when they left for LifeWise. They included simple circuits, building and launching foam rockets and 3-D modeling. Leading up to the 2024 solar eclipse, when Milton was in the path of totality, he planned a month of activities, including a visit from a mobile planetarium. 

“It’s insulting,” said Limke, who grew up Catholic, but now considers himself an atheist. “I work very hard to come up with lessons that are rigorous and fun and important.”

While LifeWise requires parent permission, specific procedures vary by district, according to Czernejewski, the organization’s spokeswoman. In Ayersville, Ohio, the district Geren’s children attend, the initial permission form remains in effect year to year unless a parent requests a withdrawal. That seems wrong to Nick Sullivan, whose oldest daughter wanted to stop attending after fifth grade. 

“You’ve got to send in a paper stating that you do not want your kid to attend LifeWise or they’re going to automatically enroll them,” Sullivan said. He thinks schools should require the permission slips annually, just like other paperwork. 

Sullivan withheld his daughter’s name to protect her privacy. Now an eighth grader, she told The 74 she found the LifeWise lessons repetitive and said the instructors “would give us a full bag of candy” for reciting Bible verses. 

“I was supposed to be in study hall and they kept on sending me whether I liked it or not,” she said.

‘Crossing the line’

Experiences like those contribute to the growing opposition to LifeWise. The , formed in 2023, keeps a lookout for incidents where they think school officials inappropriately promote the program or allow LifeWise too much access. They’ve found school officials who tout LifeWise in newsletters or post photos on social media with the group’s leaders. Other examples they’ve gathered since 2023 include:

• Continental Elementary in northwest Ohio shared a video of a LifeWise representative on its Facebook page in 2022. The woman displayed baked goods students could choose from if they attended a LifeWise fundraiser. “We have yummy brownies, cookies with M&M’s,” she said. “It’s just so beautiful.” The district did not respond to questions about the video. 

• The Culver district in Indiana, west of Fort Wayne, held a LifeWise-related assembly during school hours last year that caught the attention of attorneys at the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The organization, which advocates for church-state separation, reminded Superintendent Karen Shuman of the district’s policy stating that “no solicitation for attendance at religious instruction shall be permitted on [district] premises.”
  
  In an email to The 74, Shuman said the district is “not conducting Lifewise programs” and that she had “no idea” what the assembly was about. 

• The Supreme Court said religious instruction during the school day should be held off school grounds. The Elmwood Local Schools, south of Toledo, rents space to LifeWise near a school. Superintendent Tony Borton said the lease “has not been an issue in our community.” But last year, he warned against mentioning LifeWise during high school announcements after someone complained, according to an email the Secular Education Association obtained through a public records request. “We are crossing the line with these type things,” Borton wrote. “I am trying to reign in [sic], with the hope we can do more later when we are not under the radar.”

A 74 analysis of data from GovSpend, a company that tracks government purchases, turned up a few additional examples of expenditures that could raise questions. In 2022, Ohio’s Franklin Monroe school district paid , a basketball spinning performer, $800 for a “LifeWise assembly.” A LifeWise representative, initiated the event, according to district emails. The district did not respond to questions about it. 

Another Ohio district, River View, cut a check for $2,000 to LifeWise earlier this year. The funds came from community members donating to the organization, but were improperly routed through the district, said district Treasurer Kara Kimes.

“I’d like to get these funds cleaned up ASAP as donations that are directly for Lifewise shouldn’t be flowing through the district,” she wrote to another staff member in an email The 74 obtained through a public records request.

Czernejewski, the LifeWise spokeswoman, said the organization does not advise local school districts, but that its “role is to operate in compliance with applicable laws.” She added that she was unaware of school officials promoting the program, noting that LifeWise can submit announcements to district newsletters, just like other community organizations.

‘Develop good relationships’

Off-site religious studies during the school day date back to the early 1900s when the offered “seminary” classes to students in Granite, Utah. 

Around the same time, a Gary, Indiana, an off-site religious studies program, and the concept began to grow across the country.

One of the longest-running examples is , based in South Carolina, the first state to allow districts to award elective credit for such programs. Like the lawmaker in Georgia, Executive Director Ken Breivik said the classes allow parents who can’t afford private school “to get some sort of religious experience.” But he thinks forcing districts to release students can spark a “visceral reaction” from school leaders and prefers not to talk much about LifeWise.

“We are just a different organization. We have never done a school board presentation,” he said. He will ask districts to allow a small pilot program before spreading to multiple schools. “We work really hard to develop good relationships with the schools we serve.”

In January, Penton, LifeWise’s founder, joined a to discuss an unlikely competitor in , outside Columbus: Hellion Academy for Independent Learning, or HAIL. The Satanic Temple sponsors the program as an alternative to Christian groups meeting during the school day. The organizers’ intent, Penton said, is “to rattle people” and get districts to stop releasing students for any religious instruction.

HAIL, which focuses on secular humanism rather than Satan worship, began as parent Susannah Plumb’s response to her kids’ classmates leaving school for , a Pennsylvania program.

“It’s not in-your-face proselytization, but little kids don’t understand. They see Johnny get on the bus once a week … and go on a field trip,” Plumb said. “My kids felt left behind.”

HAIL meets at a nearby library, where the kids conduct science experiments, launch community service projects and paint “kindness stones” to place in a local park at the end of the year. But she said the program wouldn’t exist if Joy El, LifeWise and others didn’t.

“I believe in the separation of church and state, but I also believe in plurality,” she said. “When there’s one, there needs to be another.”

He began opening monthly board meetings with a Christian prayer, released a about protecting children from transgender students, and at odds with his agenda. The next two and a half years were marked by a steady stream of edicts, incendiary statements and disruptions that included , funding delays and conflicts with .

“Every seven days you could expect something coming. It was almost like clockwork,” said Robert Franklin, a former associate superintendent of Tulsa Tech, a district that offers career and technical education programs. 

As Walters leaves his post as state superintendent to head the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a national anti-union organization, Oklahomans say his turbulent administration offered a preview of the Trump administration’s “” approach to overhauling education. Despite about educators “closest to the child” knowing what’s best in the classroom, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, like Walters, has embraced an aggressive, top-down approach that frequently targets teachers for an assortment of perceived ills, from equity policies to protecting the rights of LGBTQ students.

In February, an Oklahoma City called his state a “testing ground for Project 2025,” the conservative Heritage Foundation’s 920-page strategy document that federal agencies are closely following. In the same way Walters welcomed like David Barton and Dennis Prager to influence a rewrite of the state’s social studies standards, the Trump administration has assembled dozens of conservative leaders and organizations to shape a for the nation’s 250th birthday.

In both cases, improving schools took a backseat to a singular — some might say, relentless — focus on the culture war. Walters’ grip on the state’s schools was “a microcosm of what we’re now facing at the federal level,” said the Rev. Shannon Fleck, executive director of Faithful America, an online community that seeks to counteract Christian nationalism. 

In Oklahoma, where she led an interfaith network, educators grew fearful for their jobs as Walters teamed up with , who created , to monitor teachers’ social media. In Washington, McMahon laid off 1,300 staffers and officials told districts nationwide that they would lose federal funds if they didn’t eliminate programs aimed at closing racial achievement gaps. 

To some right-leaning groups, Walters was a champion for parental rights whose “courage” deserves respect. “He showed that it’s possible to push back against the machine,” a supporter on Facebook. 

In part due to his use of to get himself on conservative media, Walters’ actions drew attention far outside his state. But the visibility also made him fodder for . Stephen Colbert called out the Oklahoma chief’s mandate that every classroom have a Bible and teachers incorporate scriptures into their lessons.

“Our kids have to understand the role the Bible played in influencing American history,” Walters said in a video from behind his desk last year after spending on 500 Trump-endorsed Bibles for AP Government courses. “It’s very clear that the radical left has driven the Bible out of the classroom. We will not stop until we’ve brought the Bible back to every classroom in the state.”

For Oklahoma superintendents, the mandate was no joke. 

“Most of my colleagues across the state are in the front row at their local church every Sunday, and here’s this guy forcing the Bible on them,” said Craig McVay, who retired in 2022 as superintendent of the El Reno district, outside Oklahoma City, and is now for state superintendent. 

accused Walters of trying to local curriculum, noting that students were already allowed to bring their own Bibles to school. “Especially in the smaller communities of this state, it’s very difficult to stand up against Jesus, and that’s what he forced them to do.”

He largely failed.

Most districts have no plans to change current practices, while both the and the blocked Walters’ plan to purchase 55,000 Bibles.

Trump hasn’t conditioned federal funds on Bible reading in public schools, but the federal department is expected to issue new guidance on what he called “total protection” for . Some worry the administration will over other religions in violation of the First Amendment. 

‘Trumpier than Trump’

After Trump’s November victory, Walters created a special committee to help the state comply with the president’s education agenda. In a letter to parents, he called Trump “a fearless champion of efforts to eliminate the federal bureaucracy that has shut local communities and parents out of the decisions that impact their students’ educations.” Some speculated that Walters, who did not return calls or texts to comment for this article, was for a job in Trump’s cabinet, particularly the one the president ultimately gave to McMahon. 

His frequent social media posts continue to voice unwavering support for Trump on issues such as , , and even .

Leslie Finger, an assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, said she wondered if Walters’ strategy toward achieving “political prominence” was to be “Trumpier than Trump.” 

She pointed, for example, to Kari Lake, the former TV news anchor and Trump ally who that former President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020. She sued, unsuccessfully, to overturn a gubernatorial election she lost to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in 2022 and still denies she lost her in 2024.

But while Trump chose Lake to lead, and , the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which runs Voice of America, Walters never got the nod. To Derek Black, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina, that’s surprising.

“His brazenness seems to be a character trait the administration values, which begs the question of why he stayed in Oklahoma,” Black said. It’s “somewhat likely,” he added, that Walters “lacked the insider network to get a position high enough to suit him.”

Once Trump was re-elected, Walters advanced policies that seemed to stay one step ahead of his hero. He pushed through that expect students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results,” even though ruled there was no evidence that the Biden campaign “stole” the election. , the standards present the “full and true context of our nation’s founding and of the principles that made and continue to make America great and exceptional.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court the state from implementing them after parents, teachers and faith leaders sued, arguing the standards require teaching from the Bible. 

Over 1,300 miles away, the Trump administration is undergoing a similar overhaul of the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., to replace “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.” Exhibits, , focus too much on “how bad slavery was” and offer “nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

In line with Trump’s immigration policy, Walters to round up undocumented students at school and instructed districts to collect parents’ citizenship status when they enrolled their children. The state legislature opposed the plan.

The federal government has attempted to bar undocumented children from attending Head Start and issued that prohibits students, including those in high school, from receiving tuition assistance for career and technical education.

‘Christian patriot’

To Black, the law professor, Walters was “so far out of bounds” that he “cared even less about rules …than the current administration.”

He required teachers from New York and California, seeking to work in Oklahoma, to take a to screen out “woke” applicants — a move said would discourage efforts to recruit teachers. But as with Trump, his boundary pushing endeared him to Christian nationalists, who maintain a strong foothold in Oklahoma. One group, the Tulsa-based City Elders, considers Walters a “Christian patriot” who worked to advance their mission of “establishing the kingdom of God” on earth and infusing government with Christian principles.  

“This is a war for the souls of our kids,” Walters in 2022. “The brilliance of our founders and the acknowledgement of almighty God — that’s where our blessings come from. That’s where our rights came from … and the left wants us to take that out of schools.”

Last August, when GOP lawmakers called for investigations into Walters’ management of state education funds, members of the group school board meetings and were the first to sign up to speak. 

City Elders hosted him again at a gala in March, but , organized by groups that oppose Christian nationalism, gathered outside the Tulsa-area conference center. Some waved signs that said “Impeach Walters,” calling him a “danger” to education.

A month later, he came face-to-face with critics during a “town hall” event organized by the Turning Point USA chapter at Oklahoma State University, considered one of the colleges in the country. Co-founder Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated Sept 10 in Utah, founded the organization to mobilize college students around conservative ideas and encourage open debate.

But Walters couldn’t finish his sentences amid the angry chants about his and his following the death of a nonbinary student last year. He called Nex Benedict’s death, later determined to be a suicide, a tragedy. But he also used the moment to voice opposition to schools that allowed students to use facilities that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth. His administration, he said, would not “lie to students” about being able to change their gender. 

At the time, he was still a potential candidate for governor. In June, suggested that while Walters trailed frontrunner Attorney General Gentner Drummond by 27 percentage points, a path to the Republican nomination wasn’t impossible. Some question why a politician with Walters’ ambition would walk away for a new position with an uncertain future. He was also eligible to run again for state superintendent.

“It’s pretty rare for someone to resign [during] their first term in a position when they’ve got another one available,” , a civics and voting rights advocate, said on a �ճ�ܰ����岹��.��

While Walters and were once close, observers say the superintendent had no chance of getting the . They had a series of on issues ranging from Walters’ attempt to take over the Tulsa schools to his support for immigration raids at school. Walters’ allegiance to Trump may have worked against him, said Jeffrey Henig, a professor emeritus of education and political science at Teachers College, Columbia University. 

“There’s an odd lack of symmetry in the politics around Trump,” he said. “Crossing him is close to political suicide for Republicans, but trying to read from his script does not confer equal and proportionate success.”  

When McMahon visited the state in August, she a charter school tour with the governor’s office, not Walters — a move widely viewed as a political snub. 

In a farewell letter to parents, he counted eliminating “woke indoctrination” and teacher recruitment efforts among his accomplishments. He that 151 special education teachers, including 34 from out of state, would receive signing bonuses of $20,000. It was Kirk’s death, he r, that inspired him to take the job at the Teacher Freedom Alliance and that “national leaders” recruited him for the position.

“We have to have more people step up on the national stage to protect this country’s values,” he said. “We’ve got to get rid of the teachers unions.” 

In typical outsized fashion, Walters didn’t just pay his respects to Kirk. He mandated that schools hold a moment of silence on Sept. 16 at noon — at a time when students would be eating lunch or enjoying recess. 

He followed up with a declaration that all Oklahoma high schools would open a Turning Point USA club, even though leaves those decisions up to local school boards.

To Franklin, who took opposite sides with Walters on issues like Christian charter schools, the moment was telling. The former Tulsa Tech official said it underscored why Walters, despite the backing of right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation and Moms for Liberty, might struggle outside of Oklahoma.

As Walters assumes a new national position, Franklin said that unlike Kirk, the former chief never sparked a “groundswell of ‘Oh my God, we need to listen to this guy,’ ” Kirk’s organization had over 900 college chapters prior to his death and has since to establish thousands more. His campus appearances could draw thousands.

“The Charlie Kirk phenomenon only strikes every once in a while, and I don’t think Walters has that kind of following.”

In a 6-3 ruling, the conservative justices said the Montgomery County Public Schools must reinstate its opt-out policy. The opinion puts districts nationwide on notice that parents should have a greater say over whether their children are exposed to views that conflict with what they learn at home. 

“We conclude that the parents are likely to succeed in their challenge to the board’s policies,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. “A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill.”

The case, , now returns to a lower court, which will consider whether the district violated the parents’ First Amendment rights. Eric Baxter, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the parents, said he expects the district to settle.

“The court’s ruling clearly will extend through the end of this case,” he said. “I don’t think there are any facts the school board can produce that will change the court’s mind.” 

In , the district said it “will determine next steps and navigate this moment with integrity and purpose.”

‘The assault on books’

In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed sympathy for district officials’ decision to stop allowing families to opt out. 

“The result will be chaos for this nation’s public schools” and “impose impossible administrative burdens on schools,” she said in the minority opinion, joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan. What would happen, she asked, if a school had to alert parents any time a lesson or story might contradict what parents believe. “Next to go could be teaching on evolution, the work of female scientist Marie Curie, or the history of vaccines.”

PEN America, a free speech organization that advocates against restrictions on books, criticized the ruling, saying that it lays the “foundation for a new frontier in the assault on books of all kinds in schools.” 

The case reflects an ongoing clash between efforts to represent LGBTQ families in the curriculum and the rights of religious parents. The families who sued — Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox Christian — argued that simply having the books in the classroom offended their beliefs. But rather than demanding the district remove them outright, they asked that their children be allowed to leave class when teachers read the books. The Trump administration, 26 GOP-led states and 66 members of Congress sided with the parents.

“This ruling is more than just a legal win. It is a moral and spiritual triumph that acknowledges the sacred responsibility entrusted to parents,” said Billy Moges, a Christian mother of three and board member for Kids First, an advocacy group that formed to oppose the district’s move.

In a call with reporters Friday, Baxter called the ruling “a win-win” because it shows parents with religious disagreements “don’t get to veto everyone else’s practices.”

In 2022, the 160,000-student Montgomery district added LGBTQ inclusive books like “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” about a girl’s uncle who marries another man, and “Born Ready,” about a transgender boy, to its elementary curriculum. In March 2023, officials announced they would end their policy of allowing parents to opt their children out of listening to the stories and any classroom discussions about the books. They argued that the policy applied to all parents, not just those wanting opt outs for religious reasons. 

The books were not intended to influence students’ beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity, officials argued, but to reflect the diversity of the community. That didn’t satisfy the parents who sued, some of whom left the district over the issue.

“I would have loved to keep my children in public school, … but I just didn’t have that choice,” Moges told The 74 before the oral arguments in April. 

‘Need not wait for the damage’

The conservatives rejected the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s opinion that there was insufficient evidence of how teachers were actually using the books in the classroom to determine whether students were coerced into adopting the views they represented. 

“When a deprivation of First Amendment rights is at stake, a plaintiff need not wait for the damage to occur before filing suit,” Alito wrote. The books, he said, “are designed to present the opposite viewpoint to young, impressionable children, …present same-sex weddings as occasions for great celebration and suggest that the only rubric for determining whether a marriage is acceptable is whether the individuals concerned ‘love each other.’ ” 

The ruling came a day after the of the court’s landmark ruling in that made gay marriage legal nationwide. Alito, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented from the majority in that case. 

In the Mahmoud ruling, the court also shot down the suggestion — one that Jackson elaborated on during oral arguments — that parents who don’t like what public schools teach can put their children in private school or homeschool them.

“Public education is a public benefit, and the government cannot ‘condition’ its ‘availability’ on parents’ willingness to accept a burden on their religious exercise,” Alito wrote.

The ruling means that schools will have to give parents, especially those with young children, more advance notice when lessons are planned that touch on religious beliefs.

“The court drew a clear line: simple exposure to ideas is allowed, but instruction that pushes a particular moral viewpoint — especially without room for dissent — can cross into a constitutional burden,” said Asma Uddin, a Georgetown University law professor who focuses on religious liberty.  

Some faith leaders argue the books never should have been viewed through a religious lens and that the court’s decision will further marginalize LGBTQ students and families at a time when the Trump administration is seeking to remove their legal protections.  

The ruling “is just the latest example of religion being used as a tool of discrimination and misappropriated to harm our neighbors,” Rev. Shannon Fleck, executive director of Faithful America, a Christian social-justice organization, said in a statement. “The truth is that there is no scripture or religious doctrine that denies the existence of LGBTQ people.”

The two new Texas laws are part of a broader push this year as Republican lawmakers in pursue bills that bolster the presence of religion in public schools — legislation critics contend violates the Constitution. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” or favor one over another. Proponents of the policies in Texas and other conservative states have framed the laws as a matter of religious freedom and believe the Supreme Court is on their side. 

On the same day Abbott took those steps to legislate religion in public schools, a federal appeals court in New Orleans found a similar law requiring Ten Commandments displays in Louisiana classrooms was unconstitutional.

In Texas, and throughout the South in particular, the new laws have garnered overwhelming support from the public, the shows. While 52% of adults nationally said they favor allowing teachers to lead prayers that refer to Jesus, 81% felt that way in Mississippi and 61% did in Texas. In the Lone Star State, 38% of adults opposed having teachers lead Christian prayer. 

The latest results are “a lot higher than what we’re used to seeing” among Americans who “want to see the end of church-state separation or public displays [of the Ten Commandments],” Chip Rotolo, a research associate at Pew focused on religion, told The 74. 

Views on Christian prayers in public school, by state

% who say they oppose/favor allowing public school teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus

Note: The blue and orange bars show the confidence intervals around each estimate at a 95% confidence level. In the 16 states with unbolded names, the shares saying they favor and saying they oppose Christian prayers in public schools are not significantly different.
Source: Religious Landscape Study of U.S. adults conducted July 17, 2023-March 4, 2024

Jonathan Covey, the policy director at the nonprofit lobbying group Texas Values, told The 74 he wasn’t surprised by the survey results as people turn to religion as an “opportunity for moral clarity” and to find “comfort and encouragement in difficult times.” 

“The country wanting to see the involvement of religion in civic society, that has been a good thing, and we’ve seen that the Supreme Court has said that the Establishment Clause doesn’t demand a strict government neutrality towards religion,” Covey said. “Actually to the contrary, it’s always been understood that religion has a place in American civic society.”

Texas Values lobbied the state legislature to get the new laws across the finish line. One requires a 16-by-20-inch poster of the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom statewide. The second allows public schools to provide students and educators time during the school day to pray or read the Bible or other religious texts.  

Jonathan Saenz, the group’s president, called the new Ten Commandments requirement “a Texas-sized blessing,” noting in a statement that it “stands shoulder to shoulder with partner organizations” and is prepared to fight “against any court challenges brought against it.”  

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit that opposes government policies intertwined with religion, over the Texas law requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms. The group has against a similar Arkansas requirement signed into law in April. In that lawsuit, seven Arkansas families with children in public schools — and who identify as Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, Humanist, agnostic, atheist and nonreligious — allege the law imposes one religious perspective on all students. 

Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, considered among the nation’s most conservative, issued blocking Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law. The judges found the requirement to install a Protestant version of the commandments violated the Establishment Clause. 

Constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel, who serves as vice president of strategic communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the Fifth Circuit’s ruling made clear that “the separation of church and state is the best protection for religious freedom that we have.”

“These Ten Commandments displays are meant to tell the viewer — the captive kindergartener or third grader or seventh grader — which God is approved by the government, which God to pray to, which religion is correct,” Seidel told The 74. “That is inappropriate for a public school classroom, as inappropriate as it is clear that that tells the Buddhist students that they’re wrong, the Muslim kid that their religion is false, the Hindu child that their gods are fallacious, and the non-religious and atheist and agnostic kids are told by the state they’re misguided.” 

Religion is partisan

Results from the Pew study reflect a political split on support for the separation of church and state. Opposition to teacher-led prayer at school was strongest in Democratic strongholds like Massachusetts and California and highest in Washington, D.C., at 69%. Across 22 states, majorities of adults supported school prayers led by teachers. Opponents were in the majority in 12 states and the District of Columbia, and in 16 states, the share of respondents who supported school prayer was not statistically different from those in opposition. The nationally representative survey of nearly 37,000 U.S. adults, taken between July 2023 and March 2024, has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.8 percentage points. 

Rotolo, the Pew research associate, said he found the regional patterns particularly interesting. While support was strongest in the South, “you see right down the whole West Coast, most people oppose seeing Christian prayer in school.”

Pew , when 46% of adults said teachers should not be allowed to lead students in any kinds of prayers, a practice that saw support at the time from just 30% of respondents. However, 23% said they had no opinion on the issue. The latest survey didn’t give respondents an opportunity to choose “neither.” 

“Just by posing the question differently, we actually see some different results,” Rotolo said, acknowledging that the change could also reflect a shift in public opinion over the last four years. It’s also possible that some respondents who said they support school prayer in the recent survey “may not have particularly strong opinions about this” and may have chosen “neither” if given the option. 

Rotolo said the favorability of teacher-led prayer in public schools was dominant among Republicans, at 70%.  Just 34% of Democrats were in support. Older Americans were also significantly more likely to allow educator-led prayers in schools than recent high school students. 

Support also varied drastically between racial groups. Among Black respondents, 67% supported teacher-led prayer compared to 50% of white adults. Just 36% of Asian Americans were in favor. 

Seidel, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he wasn’t particularly surprised to see the Pew survey results, in part because it reflects a “coordinated assault on the separation of church and state right now” amid attempts by lawmakers across the country “to promote Christian nationalism.” 

“Those folks in the minority, whether it be religion or nonreligious, are the biggest supporters of separation of church and state because they know what it is to have a government impose their religion on them,” Seidel said.

Meanwhile in 2023, in the nation to allow school districts to hire religiously affiliated chaplains to provide counseling services to students. As of April, has hired a full-time religious chaplain while more than two dozen others have opted out of the measure. In 2021, Texas lawmakers required schools to display any “In God We Trust” signs donated to them by private organizations, and in 2024, the State Board of Education that relies heavily on biblical teachings. 

The efforts to bolster religion in schools, including in Texas and Louisiana, could again appear before the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. In 1980, the high court be displayed in classrooms, finding the displays served no secular purpose and ran afoul of the First Amendment. 

This time, Republican lawmakers are banking on a more favorable court makeup. In 2022, the Supreme Court found the First Amendment protected a Washington high school football on the field after games. Last month, an evenly divided Supreme Court blocked the opening of a religious charter school in Oklahoma, which would have been the nation’s first. If Justice Amy Coney Barrett had not recused herself in that case, some believe there would have been a majority permitting the school.

Covey, of the nonprofit Texas Values, said recent Supreme Court opinions have begun to abandon the 1980 opinion against the Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky schools. The court’s opinion upholding the Washington football coach’s right to pray on the field, he said, was “the nail in the coffin.” 

Now Christian schools in Maine, where the case originated, want the courts to go even further. 

They object to a state law that requires them to accept all students, including those who don’t follow their religion, have disabilities or identify as LGBTQ. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit heard the case in January.

“This moral panic over letting religious schools be religious — even if they’re receiving tuition subsidies — needs to end,” said Adele Keim, senior counsel with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The nonprofit law firm represents St. Dominic Academy in Auburn, Maine, which sued over the rule along with CrossPoint Church, which operates . 

The nondiscrimination law, schools say, prevents them from participating in “town tuitioning” — a program that picks up a student’s private school costs if there’s no public option in their community. 

The state argues that it’s only asking religious schools to comply with the same rules public and secular private schools follow.

“The schools are asking for special treatment,” said Alexandra Zaretsky, litigation counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The nonprofit advocacy group submitted a brief to the court in support of Maine’s position. “It should be the state’s prerogative to say ‘If you’re getting funding from the state, then you have to follow our generally applicable laws.’ ”

Most states with voucher programs already allow private and religious schools to deny admissions to whomever they want. Maine is an outlier — a blue state that would prefer to keep religious schools out of the tuitioning program. 

The debate reflects a heightened concern among advocates for public education that the nationwide push for private school choice will further isolate students.

“Religious schools getting the taxpayer-funded ability to pick their own kids is one real goal of this school voucher push — a feature, not a bug,” said Joshua Cowen, an education professor at Michigan State University. Last year, he released a book that delves into the way culture war battles have fueled private school choice.

In March, in opposition to Texas’ new ESA law, which passed in April with help from President Donald Trump. The president of the state House, urging them to vote yes. Earlier in that , which lasted nearly 24 hours, Laura Colangelo, executive director of the Texas Private School Association, said private schools could deny admission to a child whose mother wasn’t married when she got pregnant.

says the state can’t force a school to modify policies tied to their religious beliefs. If the Maine case goes the religious schools’ way, such rules would be “less necessary,” Cowen said.

“I’m a Christian man. I sing in a church choir. I can still say what these schools want to do is wrong,” he said. “These guys just want a blank check to do what they want, even if it’s leaving some kids and families out.”

A ‘source of balkanization’

The issue was also at the forefront of Oklahoma’s legal fight to open a religious charter school, a debate that both supporters and opponents of the idea expect to eventually wind up back in court.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court tied 4-4 on the question of whether charter schools are private and can explicitly teach religion. The deadlock allowed the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision against St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to stand. Though promising not to turn any students away, school leaders said they would only call students by their birth names and pronouns and would refer students with disabilities to their local district if accommodating their needs disrupted class.

Some experts see the prospect of sectarian charter schools as a threat to American values. 

“Public education, including public charter schools, is one of the few things that holds our society together,” said Richard Kahlenberg, who directs the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank. “It’s the common experience for 90% of American schoolchildren.” 

“If you suddenly have … Christian students going to their schools, Jewish students going to theirs, Muslim students going to theirs, that means fewer Christian students come to know Jewish and Muslim students as classmates and friends,” Kahlenberg said in a panel discussion prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Oklahoma case. “Our public schools are already highly segregated by race and class, and this would just layer on religion as a new source of balkanization.” 

‘Infinite number of options’

In Utah, the state’s teachers union sued last year over a new ESA program because they say it “diverts” education funds to schools that discriminate in admissions. In April, a state district court judge ruled the program unconstitutional.

“We firmly believe, and a judge agreed, that public money belongs in public schools,” said Hailey Higgins, communications director for the Utah Education Association.

To choice supporters — and the Trump administration — the more private schools that cater to families’ individual preferences, the better. That’s the argument that the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, along with parents currently in the program, made in to the Utah Supreme Court.

When she learned about the lawsuit, Amanda Koldewyn, an Ogden mother of four, said she felt “anger, frustration and panic.” Her 12-year-old son, who has autism, was getting sick from anxiety in public school and was “bored out of his mind” in class. The Utah Fits All scholarship allowed her to find a curriculum where he can move at his own pace and pay a private math tutor for her daughter. She hopes to use the program for her 5-year-old twins this fall as well.

“I can actually get the resources that aren’t just passable, but are fine tuned to what my children need,” she said. “I get really, really angry at those few teachers who think public school is the only way.”

The debate over whether religious schools in choice programs can refuse to serve families who don’t share their values is also playing out with younger students in Colorado. The state’s universal preschool program requires participating schools to accept students from families regardless of parents’ housing status, income level, or religion, sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Two over the regulation, saying they couldn’t participate in the program because their faith prohibits them from accepting LGBTQ students or parents. That means the state doesn’t pick up the cost for students in those schools. The case is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. 

In other countries, it’s far more common for students to attend religious schools at the government’s expense. , fully funds Catholic school districts. In European countries like the Netherlands, attend government-funded religious schools.

Many countries place on those schools that choice advocates in the U.S. would resist, explains Sam Abrams, director of the International Partnership for the Study of Educational Privatization at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Religious schools often follow the same criteria for student admissions as public schools, teach to national standards and submit to monitoring visits.

“It’s all regulated, and you can’t screen kids out,” he said, noting that in recent school choice cases, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court never referenced how these systems work in other countries. “They’re not going to talk about the European system. It forces them to acknowledge that what [the U.S.] is doing is very different.”

Maine’s demands on religious schools depart from the way the tuitioning program used to operate. For decades, Catholic and other religious schools were “willing and active participants in this program,” Keim said. That ended in the 1980s — what she called the “shag carpet-era view of the Establishment Clause” — when the legislature passed a law excluding religious schools.

“For 25 years, Maine families have been knocking at the courthouse door and asking the federal courts to let them back in,” Keim said. 

In 2021, as the Carson case made its way to the Supreme Court, lawmakers amended the to prohibit discrimination against students in all private schools receiving public funds, including religious schools. The real “poison pill,” she said, is a provision that requires religious expression without discrimination. 

“If they’re going to allow a Catholic pro-life club,” she said, “they’re going to have to allow a Catholic pro-choice club.”

If the schools prevail in court, St. Dominic’s won’t be accepting any high school students. While the pre-K through eighth grade school will still operate, the this year due to low enrollment. 

“I’m sure the picture would be different,” Keim said, “if they had been allowed to receive these subsidies over the long term.”

Two groups filed a lawsuit against West Virginia’s state Department of Health, its Bureau for Public Health and agency leaders on Friday, challenging Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s January executive order, which opened the door for religious and philosophical exemptions to mandatory school vaccination policies. The American Civil Liberties Union’s West Virginia chapter and Mountain State Justice filed the suit in Kanawha County Circuit Court on behalf of two parents with immunocompromised children, according to reporting by

Just over 330 requests for religious and philosophical exemptions to West Virginia’s school vaccine policy have been submitted — and approved — for this school year and 35 have been granted for the coming year, according to records obtained by The 74.

The newly approved religious and philosophical exemptions already outpace the 203 permanent medical exemptions granted in the state over the past decade, at one time the only exemptions allowed in West Virginia.

Before January, when Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed an opening the door for broader exemptions, the state had some of the nation’s strictest childhood vaccination policies. 

The loosening of those policies is occurring amid a deadly measles outbreak that has infected over  across 30 states and despite state legislators rejecting a bill in March which would have codified religious exemptions into state law. The conflict between the governor’s order and the legislature’s action has over how West Virginia officials should proceed and could ultimately lead to legal action between the two branches of government. 

In the meantime, the West Virginia Department of Health is granting religious and philosophical exemptions based on the governor’s order and shared those numbers in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The 74.

No requests for the newer category of exemptions has been denied, the department said. In contrast, 125 requests for medical exemptions to mandatory school vaccines have been rejected since 2015. Temporary medical exemptions have been granted to 288 West Virginia children in the past decade.

Richard Hughes, a George Washington University law professor and leading vaccine law expert, said the 331 religious and philosophical exemptions sought in just five months represent a “drastic, dramatic increase in the request for exemptions, and that’s going to potentially have public health consequences.”

He added the state appears to be approving them liberally and without real scrutiny.

“Clearly, when you open the door to these types of exemptions, people use them,” he said. “There has been evidence before that when only religious exemption is available, people request them without any really sincerely held belief. This just opens the floodgates.”

While the 331 students who have received exemptions represent a very small percentage of the approximately enrolled in public schools across the state, experts fear the number will continue to rapidly climb, especially at the start of the coming school year.

“You see how fast we approved those? Hundred percent approved … So if we keep allowing an executive order that goes against West Virginia code, it’s going to change the vaccination rate …” said Sissy Price, a registered nurse who serves as co-director of West Virginia Families for Immunization. “And it’s not a matter of if it’s going to happen, it’s a matter of when.”

Experts also emphasized the importance of knowing which regions or schools in West Virginia the exempted students come from to better understand the impact on herd immunity and to allow parents — especially those of immunocompromised students — to make informed decisions about where to send their kids to school.

Despite the governor’s insistence that the state collect that information, an official at the Health Department wrote in an email to The 74, “Nobody in the Department of Health or the Bureau for Public [Health] tracks that.”

“There’s a failure of government there,” said Northe Saunders, executive director of the pro-vaccine . “There’s a failure of making sure that parents can make the best informed decision that they can if we don’t know what immunization rates are like at the school level.”

The governor’s office and the Department of Health did not respond to requests for comment.

So far, West Virginia has no reported measles cases. Two children, both of whom were unvaccinated, have died during the current outbreak, whose case numbers have already surpassed 2024’s total and mark the second-highest number of confirmed cases in a year since the disease was declared eradicated in the U.S. in 2000. Some 96% of reported infections have involved a person who was unvaccinated or whose status was unknown and 13% have resulted in hospitalization. 

In issuing his Jan. 14 executive order, Morrisey relied on an interpretation of the state’s 2023 Equal Protection for Religion Act.

He argued that the law as it stood “forces” some West Virginians “to choose between their religious belief and their children’s fundamental right to public education,” and directed the commissioner of the Bureau for Public Health and the state health officer to establish a process for parents to object. The executive order noted that a “written, signed objection” was sufficient.

Based on the legislature voting down the measure to codify the broader exemption category, state schools Superintendent Michele Blatt issued a memo earlier this month to county superintendents recommending that students not be allowed to attend school next year without required immunizations, regardless of requests for religious exemptions. 

“We are faced with the fact that state law has not been changed by the Legislature and there is no religious exemption provided for in West Virginia law,” Blatt wrote, according to reporting by

But, by the end of the day she rescinded the memo, she had done so “at the Governor’s request.” 

Morrisey then issued May 9 saying that despite the legislative hurdle, the executive order “still stands, and I have no intention of rescinding it.” He further clarified the process to receive an exemption: Each year, parents or guardians must send a signed letter with basic information including their child’s name, date of birth and mailing address. Notably, the letter does not need to include the reason for the requested exemption.

In the wake of this confusion, some school districts have begun seeking about how to respond. 

West Virginia is not an outlier in its quest to allow parents to opt their children out of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine that is a requirement in all 50 states for children entering child care and schools. 

“It goes towards the general erosion of vaccine policy,” said Saunders. “We’ve seen these kinds of small, incremental changes that are eroding vaccine policy in states across the country. There are still school entry requirements in West Virginia — just like there are in every single state — but this is one other chink in the armor of strong vaccine policy driving strong immunization rates.”

Childhood vaccination since COVID, and there’s fear that decline will accelerate now that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known vaccine skeptic, is heading the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. He initially in late February, and on May 14, at his in Congress since his confirmation, he waffled on the importance of vaccines.

When asked if he would vaccinate a child of his own against measles today “Probably for measles. What I would say is my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant.”

He continued, “I don’t want to make it seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.”

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration, which falls under HHS, released guidance for COVID vaccines, saying they may require additional studies before approving the shots for healthy Americans younger than 65.

Candice Lefeber, executive director of West Virginia’s chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said this move played into one of her fears: “I think the administration is going to make it harder for vaccines to be available.”

“Not only are we not going to require it, but then access to vaccines would be compromised,” she continued. “It’s just really disheartening for science and for our country — and we’re in big trouble.”

Oklahoma’s high court ruled last year that a Catholic charter school — the first of its kind in the nation — violates state and federal law. Initially, Roberts appeared to agree that the stakes seemed greater than those in earlier cases about religious schools taken up by the court.

“This does strike me as a much more comprehensive involvement,” Roberts said. 

But later in the arguments, Roberts indicated that there may be less daylight between those earlier cases and the matter of the Oklahoma school. In one, a religious school wanted to participate in a state program that provided . Another focused on whether a Christian school could serve students who received .

Roberts asked Gregory Garre, a former U.S. solicitor general considered to be one of his if the test in this case was whether the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School was “a creation and creature of the state.” Garre argued the case for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican who sued the school and the charter board.

“All of those” parties in the previous cases were state actors, Roberts said, “and we held that under the First Amendment, you couldn’t exclude people because of their religious belief.”

With Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recusal, the four remaining conservative — and — justices were sympathetic to the school’s petition. Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned how the state could prevent St. Isidore from opening a charter without running afoul of constitutional protections against religious exclusion. 

“All the religious school is saying is ‘Don’t exclude us on account of our religion,’ ” he told Garrre. “When you have a program that’s open to all comers except religion …that seems like rank discrimination.”

The debate over religious charter schools has captivated — and divided — school choice and religious advocates nationwide since early 2023, when Catholic church leaders in Oklahoma City and Tulsa first asked the state to grant a charter to St. Isidore. The case has rocked the charter sector at a time when many Christian conservatives, emboldened by President Donald Trump’s election, have pushed to infuse more biblical teaching into public classrooms. 

‘One particular faith’

The scene outside the court, where supporters and opponents alike gathered on the plaza, demonstrated the high stakes surrounding the case.

“Faith flourishes best when it is supported voluntarily,” said Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance and the great grandson of Justice Louis D. Brandeis. “Will our government endorse one particular faith with taxpayer dollars? We believe the answer must be no.”

Nearby, a black-robed choir from a Virginia Christian school sang hymns and EdChoice, an advocacy organization, organized a rally in support of St. Isidore.

Nicole Stelle Garnett, the Notre Dame law professor who the legal argument that inspired the school’s application, took photos with her students and prayed with them before entering the court. Walking through the door, she said, brought back memories of her year as a clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. 

That’s when she became friends with Barrett — the reason, many believe, the justice recused herself. The two taught at Notre Dame, were neighbors in South Bend, Indiana, and their children grew up together. Following the arguments, she said she was still processing the debate. But she later issued a statement saying that the court made “abundantly clear that Oklahoma cannot discriminate against religious organizations in a program that supports privately operated schools.”

As Roberts noted, the court’s previous cases on public funds for religious education focused on whether states must include faith-based schools in voucher-like programs. But in the Oklahoma case, leaders chose to directly fund a school that teaches Catholicism — a leap, many argue, that would violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and clearly entangle government with religion. 

“These are state-run institutions,” said Justice Elena Kagan, one of court’s three liberals. “They give the charter schools a good deal of curricular flexibility, because that’s thought to be a good educational thing. But with respect to a whole variety of things, the state is running these schools and insisting upon certain requirements.”

Oklahoma attorney general , backed by , made the same argument last year to the state supreme court, parting ways with most of his conservative state’s political leaders, who support the school’s application. They include Gov. Kevin Stitt, who attended the oral arguments, and state Superintendent Ryan Walters.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson drew a line between the Oklahoma school and the previous cases in which religious groups sought inclusion in a state program, such as one that provided access to playground surfacing materials. In this case, she said, the religious school seeks to be exempted from state charter law, which requires schools to be non-sectarian.

“As I see it, it’s not being denied a benefit that everyone else gets,” she said. “It’s being denied a benefit that no one else gets, which is the ability to create a religious public school.”

‘Boomerang effect’

Some of the opposition to religious charters comes from unexpected quarters. The libertarian Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey, for example, is a staunch supporter of private school choice. But he  that allowing explicit religious teaching in charter schools would “dangerously entangle the state with religion.”

If Roberts sides with Drummond, the 4-4 decision would allow state supreme court decision to stand. But if the court returns a 5-3 ruling, states that want to avoid religious charter schools could require most board members to be public officials, McCluskey said.

As Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested, proponents of religious charter schools may end up with more state control than they want. 

“Have you thought about that boomerang effect for charter schools?” he asked.

A ruling in favor of St. Isidore would “cause uncertainty, confusion and disruption for potentially millions of schoolchildren and families across the country,” Garre told the court. 

But the extent of that impact could vary by state. 

In Virginia, for example, school districts authorize and have tighter control over charter schools, which makes them more like state actors, said Carol Corbet Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a frequent critic of charter schools. 

In Ohio, by contrast, nonprofits are among the organizations that can , and for-profit companies are involved in running over half of them. 

“For years, charters have benefited from being in a nebulous space between public and private,” Burris said. She notes that charter schools, for example, received paycheck protection program loans during the pandemic, but public schools didn’t. “They claim public when it is in their interest, private when it is not. There is a reason that this is the case that the charter world dreaded.” 

But Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, is less concerned about such “ivory tower” questions. She’s worried about whether the nation’s nearly 8,000 charter schools will be able to pay their bills. St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, backed by the , argues that it’s essentially a private organization. If the court agrees, it could disrupt funding to charter schools across the country. 

“Every single state constitution in this country requires per-pupil funding to be spent only on public schools,” Coleman said. The argument that charter schools are private, she said, could “turn off the money that they want.”

In recent months, the Alliance has been bracing for a decision that could throw the charter sector into what Coleman called “operational uncertainty.” If the court declares that charters are not “state actors,” she said, federal and state funding for the schools, which serve nearly 4 million students, could be in jeopardy. Red states looking to expand school choice may be eager to sort out the legislative challenges and potential lawsuits that follow. But blue states, where leaders already want to , might be more reluctant. 

“I live in Texas. We’ll figure it out,” she said. But if states like New York, California and Massachusetts stop funding students at charter schools, Coleman asked, “Where do those kids go?”

In Colorado, state funding covers 98% of costs for the roughly 1,000 students who attend Loveland Classical Schools, said Executive Director Ian Stout. Without that funding, the two sites would likely have to close. If he had to charge tuition, most families, Stout said, couldn’t afford it. 

The of another scenario: If the court rules charters are private, school districts could just absorb existing charter schools to keep them public, or at least add more government oversight. But that would mean the loss of flexibility that has defined the sector since charter schools began in 1991.

“As public charter schools, we knowingly embrace that grand bargain —  public funds and local autonomy for accountability,” Stout said. Giving that up, he said, “would be counterproductive to the original intent of school choice.”

It’s already challenging to run charters in a progressive states like California, where the politically powerful blames charters for enrollment loss in district schools, said Rich Harrison, CEO of Lighthouse Community Public Schools. The network of four schools serves low-income minority students in East Oakland. If St. Isidore wins, he wonders if the public view of charters overall would suffer. 

“Operators like us, who are trying to do really important work in urban blue states, are going to be faced with much more scrutiny,” Harrison said. “We’re going to be lumped into this agenda on the right, which isn’t helpful at all for the communities we serve.”

‘Against their wishes’

Derek Black, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina, agrees the financial fallout from a decision in favor of St. Isidore could be great. But instead of states abandoning charter schools, he’s concerned the court could force “states to fund [religious] schools against their wishes.”

He argues that because charters are “state actors,” one with an explicitly religious mission would violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. 

Even if the decision falls in their favor, St. Isidore’s leaders have already decided . A late-June ruling, they said, wouldn’t give them enough time to enroll families in the online program, hire staff and make other preparations for the 2025-26 school year.

But other advocates for religious charters are getting ready to act if the court opens the door to private charter schools.

“I would love to be able to apply for 100 Jewish religious charters,” said Peter Deutsch, a former Congressman from Florida and founder of the Ben Gamla network of Hebrew language charter schools. 

He dismisses concerns from the Alliance that a ruling in favor of St. Isidore would cause states to turn their back on charter schools, calling them “an integral part of the American educational experience.”

While a Democrat, he agrees with conservatives that charter schools can practice religion. Such a ruling, he said, would “be transformative.” The vast majority of non-Orthodox Jewish students currently . 

“This has the potential to literally change the Jewish community in America in a significant meaningful way — more so than anything in my lifetime,” he said.

St. Isidore promised to accept students of any religion even though it plans to fully teach the Catholic faith. But Deutsch said Orthodox Jews might have a problem with accepting those who don’t follow their religion. 

“There is definitely a question of an Orthodox school allowing non-Jews to be in their school,” he said. “I don’t know how they’re going to deal with it.” 

Leaders of the Catholic church support St. Isidore’s argument. In to the court, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops argued that educating students is “not a traditional, exclusive public function” and that in early American history, private, religious schools worked with the government to provide schooling. 

The brief also touted recent results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress showing that Catholic schools perform higher in math and reading than public schools. The “data shows why Oklahoma would want to contract with a school like St. Isidore for charter-school services,” the brief said.

But some Catholic school leaders have strong reservations about how a ruling in favor of St. Isidore would impact religious schools.

Greg Richmond, superintendent of the Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools, said religious school leaders that want to open a charter should brace themselves for giving up some control in exchange for public funds. As the founder of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, he’s intimately familiar with how the system works. 

“It’s not going to be just an infusion of cash,” he said. 

In a February post for the blog, he described scenarios that could create dilemmas for religious leaders. Could Catholic charters punish students for not attending mass? Could they fire a teacher who announces in class that he’s an atheist? He answered “no,” explaining that such outcomes would create “a lite version” of existing parochial schools.

“I actually don’t think anyone really knows how it would play out in this country,” he said. “I’m sure the courts would get pulled in again and again to mitigate some of the conflicts.” 

Disability rights advocates also warn that students could lose special education services if  charter schools are ruled to be private. St. Isidore’s says it might not accept students with disabilities whose services would “significantly alter the regular classroom process,” and that services or accommodations for students can’t be “in opposition to church teaching.”

Under the , school districts provide “equitable services,” like speech therapy, to students in private schools. Parents who choose private schools can also request a district to pay for an evaluation. But there’s no guarantee that the private school will accommodate students’ needs. 

“There’s no individualization,” said Jennifer Coco, interim executive director of the Center for Learner Equity, a nonprofit that advocates for students with disabilities in charter schools. “Whenever something that was public becomes private with regards to children, rights under IDEA, by and large, do not follow.” 

However the Court rules, the first state to grapple with its effects will be Oklahoma, where the legal battle began. Even before the justices agreed to hear the case, Barry Schmelzenbach, director of the Oklahoma Public Charter School Association, began talking with lawmakers about legislative fixes that might be necessary. He wants to prevent a situation in which “a system providing education for 50-some thousand students across the state all of a sudden can’t make payroll” because it’s been cut off from public funds.

But Schmelzenbach finds reassurance in the state’s strong history of support for school choice.

“Neither side of the debate wants to see existing charter schools harmed,” he said. “If our funding goes, then there’s also no funding for new charter schools — sectarian or not.”

In 2023, Montgomery County Public Schools ended an opt-out policy, prompting the parents, backed by religious freedom advocates, to take the district to court. 

A federal appeals court agreed with the suburban Washington district’s argument that it didn’t coerce the students to change their beliefs about gender and sexuality simply by exposing them to stories with gay or transgender characters. But some conservative justices in Tuesday’s oral arguments agreed with the families, who say the books alone pose a burden on parents’ religious beliefs and the district clearly intends to “disrupt” students’ thinking about issues like same-sex marriage and whether someone can change their pronouns. 

“What is the big deal about allowing them to opt out of this?” Justice Samuel Alito asked Alan Schoenfeld, who represents the school district. As an example of a “clear moral message,” he pointed to Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, a picture book focusing on a girl’s feelings of jealousy when her favorite uncle gets married to another man. “It doesn’t just say ‘Look, Uncle Bobby and Jamie are getting married.’ It expresses the idea [that] this is a good thing.” 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, however, warned that because the case is still at such an early stage — the parents just want to restore the opt-out policy for now — the court shouldn’t be making a decision that would force districts nationwide to adopt such policies for curriculum that could offend parents’ religious beliefs.

“Instead of having democratically elected representatives and experts in the field making the decision about which books should be taught to kids in the classroom, you have federal judges flipping through the picture books and deciding whether these are appropriate for 5 year olds,” she said. “It seems pretty troubling, because ordinarily, public education has been the subject of local control.”

‘Not a sea change’

The case, brings together multiple issues at the forefront of President Donald Trump’s conservative agenda: parental rights, religious freedom and eliminating what Trump calls from the nation’s schools. Sarah Harris, principal deputy solicitor general argued, for the government, saying that other states, including Pennsylvania, Arizona and Hawaii have “very broad” opt-out policies. She rejected the school district’s position that such arrangements pose administrative challenges for schools and teachers.

“It’s something that schools have done for a long time,” she said “It is not a sea change.”

The Montgomery County board, however, abruptly decided to end opt outs in 2023, said Eric Baxter, an attorney with Becket, a law firm that represents the parents and focuses on religious liberty. That’s when the conflict began. 

District leaders, Baxter said, chose books that are “clearly indoctrinating students” to believe differently. Because the district allows opt outs from sex education classes, the families argue the same option should be available when teachers plan to read the books in class.

The district chose the books to be inclusive and teach respect toward those with different beliefs and lifestyles, Schoenfeld said. The opt outs, according to the district, were increasingly disruptive, with at least one school seeing “dozens” of requests. Some parents kept students home for the entire day to avoid the readings. District officials maintain that they’re not discriminating against religion because they ended opt outs for all reasons, not just religious ones. 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, one of the six conservatives on the court, focused on written materials that advise teachers how to respond in class if, for example, a student says “A girl can only like boys because she’s a girl.”

The guidance instructs teachers to make comments like “When we’re born, people make a guess about our gender and label us boy or girl based on our body parts. Sometimes they’re right sometimes; they’re wrong.” 

Those statements, Barrett said, “seem to be more about influence and … shaping of ideas and less about communicating respect.” 

But Schoenfeld said there’s not enough evidence in the record showing how teachers ultimately used the books in the classroom to determine if coercion actually occurred. 

Justice Kavanaugh, who said he’s a “lifelong resident” of Montgomery County, expounded on the religious diversity of the community and questioned why the district took such a hardline position. 

“You see religious building after religious building. I’m surprised … that this is the hill we’re gonna die on in terms of not respecting religious liberty,” he said. The goal in such cases, he said, has been to “look for the win-win” — to accommodate religious beliefs while still allowing the government to pursue its goals.

“They’re not asking you to change what’s taught in the classroom,” he said about the parents. “They’re only seeking to be able to walk out.” 

‘Where the court is headed’

While the record in the case is limited, it does include a comment from Board Member Lynne Harris, who said parents don’t have a right to “micromanage their child’s public-school experience” and are free to send their children to a private religious school if they disagree with what’s taught. 

Joshua Dunn, executive director of the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is looking to the court’s past religious freedom cases as a guide to how the justices might view this debate. Former Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal, foreshadowed how far the conservative wing of the court might go to accommodate the rights of families to practice their faith, Dunn said.

In a 2017 Missouri case, , Breyer sided with the conservative majority in ruling in favor for a church that was turned down for a state grant. To him, it was just obviously wrong to deny Trinity Lutheran access to a grant program for recycled rubber for a playground,” Dunn said. “It had nothing to do with religion.”

But his views changed in and — two cases focusing on public funds for tax credits or vouchers at faith-based schools. In Carson, Breyer asked whether “public schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to send their children to religious schools.” 

Maryland doesn’t have a private school choice program, and vouchers for parents who object to the books on religious grounds are not on the table in this case, Dunn said. But he wonders whether the conservative justices could apply the same logic that concerned Breyer. 

In other words, would the court reason that because the government funds education for students whose parents don’t object to the books, it should be obligated to fund schooling for those who oppose such materials on religious grounds? 

“All you have to do,” he said “is be able to read and count noses and you can see where the court is headed.” 

For now, advocates on the district’s side want the court to show restraint and deny the parents’ request to reinstate the opt-out policy.

“They’re trying to get a court-mandated order that any parent can opt their children out of class rather than have virtually any type of exposure to books with LGBTQ characters,” said Eileen Hershenov, chief legal officer for PEN America, a free speech organization that filed a brief in the case and advocates against restrictions on books. “It’s a recipe for administrative nightmares for public schools with the likely result that students will have little or no exposure to families or characters other than those that offend no religious sensibilities.”

A group of parents sued the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, arguing that requiring children to sit through storybook readings on topics such as a and a girl giving to another girl offends their religious beliefs.

“We were forced to choose between God and education,” said Billy Moges, a Christian mother of three and a board member for Kids First, an advocacy group that formed to oppose the district’s move. She pulled her children out of the school system when officials ended the opt-out policy and has since started a private Christian school, , that meets in a Silver Spring church. 

“We’re not asking for any special treatment,” she said. ‘We’re asking for our rights to be restored.”

Regardless of who wins, the case will head back to the district court for further action.

The appeal centers on parents’ request to reinstate the opt-out policy until the district court can rule on whether the district violated their rights. But the court’s conservative majority may also use the oral arguments to address the underlying facts, said Joshua Dunn, executive director of the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

“The school board didn’t relent, and then compelled students to sit through these books being read,” he said. “I just think that for some of the justices on the court, that’s going to strike them as extraordinarily wrong-headed.” 

District officials say the books, intended for pre-K through third grade, were never intended to push views about sex and gender. The opt outs, they argue, became increasingly disruptive and contributed to absenteeism because some parents let their children skip the whole day if a lesson included one of the books. 

Opt-outs “stigmatized LGBTQ students and students who have LGBTQ families,” said Aditi Fruitwala, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports the district. Reinstating the policy, she said, would “undermine the entire purpose of a public education system, which is to create good citizens who can thrive in a society with people from a variety of backgrounds, faiths and cultures.” 

The case, , illustrates the growing tension between inclusion and religious freedom. That’s likely the reason the conservative-learning court agreed to hear the appeal, Fruitwala said. The parents who sued — Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox Christian — also have the : Solicitor General John Sauer will participate in the oral arguments. In a brief, the Department of Justice said the board’s policy forces parents to be in “dereliction of their religious duties” by sending their children to public school. Twenty-six Republican-led states and 66 members of Congress also support the parents. 

Religiously diverse

Over the past few years, confrontations over these issues have escalated in districts across the country. In February, parents in the , district, near Rochester, objected to the district’s use of The Rainbow Parade, a picture book about a young girl and her two mothers attending a Pride parade. 

Nationally, the public leans in favor of schools allowing parents to opt their children out of lessons about sexual orientation and gender identity. Fifty-four percent agreed with that view in a Pew Research poll , but the partisan divide was stark: Support for opt outs was 79% among Republicans, compared with 32% among Democrats.

Despite clashes over such materials from to , both sides of the conflict agree that Montgomery County offers an especially apt setting for the debate. The county is one of the most in the nation, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. 

Will Haun, senior counsel at Becket, a law firm that focuses on religious liberty and represents the parents, said it’s “astonishing,” that such a district would abandon the longstanding practice of accommodating parents’ opt-out requests. 

Fruitwala said the district’s rich religious and diversity is precisely why the books belong in the curriculum. District leaders, she said, have an “opportunity to incorporate books from a wide variety of cultures and perspectives and backgrounds that reflect the families in the school district.” 

The 160,000-student district’s effort to bring more diversity to its reading program began in 2022-23, when the school board voted to add six books featuring LGBTQ characters. Officials said they chose the titles for the same reasons they would add any storybooks to the curriculum — to teach sentence structure, word choice and style.

In a brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the National Education Association and its Maryland and Montgomery County affiliates highlighted comments from teachers that demonstrated students’ eager response to the books. 

A veteran second grade teacher relayed what happened when she read , a picture book about a mother who makes a rainbow-colored wig for her transgender daughter. “Upon hearing the words, ‘I’m a transgender girl,’ one of the children in my class called out, ‘That’s like my sister!’ This child felt seen,” the teacher said, according to the brief.

Ignoring LGBTQ families, district leaders say, puts schools at risk of violating state that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. 

The ruled that refusing to allow children to opt out of the readings put no burden on religious parents. That’s when the families appealed to the Supreme Court.

They argue that since the district permits families to opt their children out of sex education, under a state law, that choice should extend to books that represent LGBTQ themes in other subjects. 

“All the school board had to do,” Haun said, “was simply recharacterize sexuality and gender instruction as English language arts and they get out of a long-standing national consensus that allows parents to opt their children out of that kind of instruction.”

Last fall, the district in question — My Rainbow and , a rhyming alphabet book about a puppy that runs off during a Pride parade. But Rev. Rachel Cornwell, a Methodist minister who has two students in Montgomery County schools, said she wouldn’t be surprised if the district was forced to remove all of the storybooks.

She wishes the parents would suggest different books rather than leave the district. 

“I think the vast majority of people in Montgomery County support the inclusion of these books into the curriculum,” she said. “These are not books about sex. They are books about people’s lives and about the diversity of our community.” 

As the mother of a transgender son, she said she and other LGBTQ families want their children to feel like they belong.

“We’re not trying to indoctrinate anybody or say this is right or wrong,” she said. “That’s for you to have a conversation about with your kid at home.”

The West Virginia House Monday rejected its version of a Senate bill that would have loosened school vaccine requirements and expanded exemptions, voting it down

The bill’s defeat came after the House twice amended the Senate’s version of the legislation, first to remove both the philosophical and religious exemptions approved by the Senate and then to and to allow private and parochial schools to set their own mandatory vaccine requirements.

“The pro-vaccine messaging won out,” Northe Saunders, executive director of the pro-vaccine , told The 74 Monday.

West Virginia now has among the country’s strictest regulations governing the immunizations required for children entering child care and schools, allowing for medical exemptions only. It’s unclear what might come next.

While the House’s vote effectively killed the current legislation, over a dozen other vaccine-related bills have been introduced in the West Virginia legislature and the governor signed an executive order in January establishing the religious and philosophical exemptions that House members rejected.

Saunders said time may be running out for the other vaccine-related bills to move forward during this legislative session.

An amendment that would give West Virginia parents much greater leeway to exempt their children from mandated school vaccinations was deleted from a House bill at the last minute this week, but the prospect of far fewer students in the state getting immunized remains strong.

As written, the would still expand and loosen requirements for medical exemptions for students, making them “the broadest … in the country,” one advocate said. The religious and philosophical exemptions that were struck from the House version of the legislation could also be reintroduced and, while it doesn’t carry the same force of law, Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s January order establishing similarly far-reaching exemptions is also hanging in the balance.

Historically, West Virginia has had some of the nation’s strictest childhood vaccination policies and the current move to soften them is occurring against a deadly measles outbreak that has infected in 15 states and taken the life of one school-age child in Texas. 

“It’s hard to wrap your head around why we would do this right now — or anytime,” said Candice Lefeber, executive director of West Virginia’s chapter of the . “But at such heightened alertness with measles spreading in our country, it should be a wake-up call. And unfortunately, I don’t think that’s happening,”

West Virginia is not an outlier in its quest to allow parents to opt their children out of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine that is a requirement in all 50 states for children entering child care and schools. 

On Wednesday, Idaho lawmakers passed a that would significantly broaden an existing law banning COVID vaccine mandates to include mandates on any “medical treatment.” If the governor signs it, the bill would apply to public and private schools as well, making Idaho the first state in the country to remove all mandatory school vaccination requirements.

Childhood vaccination since COVID, and there’s fear that decline will accelerate now that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known vaccine skeptic, is heading the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. He initially in late February, and in a March 4 seemed to link the ongoing outbreak and child fatality to malnutrition and poor health while pointing to unproven treatments, such as cod oil.

“The best thing Americans can do is to keep themselves healthy,” Kennedy said in the interview. “It is very, very difficult for measles to kill a healthy, well-nourished person.”

Three months in, the number of measles cases has already surpassed 2024’s total and in the 15 states where it’s spread, 95% of infections have involved a person who was unvaccinated or whose status was unknown. Three of those states border West Virginia, although, so far, the Mountain State has no reported cases. 

‘We just want the policy left alone’

The latest House bill still has a more wide-ranging medical exemption that also protects health care providers who grant them “in good faith” from civil liability, except in cases of “gross negligence or willful misconduct.” 

It also includes no enforcement mechanism from a government oversight body nor is there guidance as to what qualifies someone for a medical exemption. 

Northe Saunders, executive director of the pro-vaccine , fears this might lead to bad actors writing “bogus” exemptions. Saunders’ group, which is based in Portland, Maine, opened a West Virginia chapter in February after local advocates asked for their help amid the exemptions push.

“We’re glad that the religious and philosophical exemptions were not part of the bill that came out of committee,” said Saunders, who believes the measles outbreak was a factor in their being cut, “but we expect [attempts to modify the bill] going forward.” 

Saunders said his organization is tracking an additional 20 vaccine-related bills in the West Virginia legislature. And, across 20 states, 47 bills have been introduced which would add or broaden vaccine exemptions.

Parents across the country are able to apply for exemptions if their child is unable to get vaccinated for medical reasons. Most states also have religious exemptions, and 20 have some form of leaving a varied landscape. 

West Virginia is currently one of only five states that don’t allow any exemptions, beyond medical ones. Last school year, they had the for four of the major mandated vaccines, significantly outperforming national averages. Almost all kindergarteners there — 98.3% — had received both doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. 

The state also had the lowest rate of exemption, with less than 0.1% of kindergarteners being exempt from one or more vaccines. And it was the only state that supported Donald Trump for president in November that did not see an average rise in official exemptions. 

That could change, depending on the fate of the pending legislation and the governor’s executive order.

“The current policy as is, is something that is highly favored among myself and my colleagues,” said Andrea Lauffer, an internal medicine doctor and pediatrician at WVU Medicine – Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston. “We just want the policy left alone.”

Michael Ramey, president of the , noted the role the pandemic has played in the current vaccine skepticism. He said that while his organization does not hold a position on the safety or efficacy of vaccines, it stands in support of bills like the one in West Virginia.

“We welcome a move to give parents greater authority to make the decision that’s best for their individual child,” he said. 

The vast majority of Americans — 88% — believe the benefits of the childhood vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella outweighs the risks, compared with just 10% who say the risks outweigh the benefits, according to a 2023 Seventy percent of Americans say healthy children should have to be vaccinated to attend school, down from 82% in 2019. And the share of parents who think they should be able to decide against vaccination is up 12 percentage points from four years ago, to 28%.

This shift is being driven by Republicans, 57% of whom now support vaccination requirements — down from 79% in 2019.

‘The heat is on’

The debate over vaccine mandates in West Virginia is not new, but “this year, definitely, the heat is on, for sure, at a higher temperature,” said Sissy Price, a registered nurse who serves as co-director of .

Last year, former Gov. Jim Justice vetoed a bill which would have allowed private and parochial schools to set their own vaccination policies. Meanwhile, Morrisey signed his executive order creating religious and philosophical exemptions on his first full day in office.

The governor wrote that current mandatory vaccine laws force West Virginians who have objections “to choose between their religious belief and their children’s fundamental right to public education.” The order, he said, was based on his interpretation of the Equal Protection for Religion Act, signed by Justice in 2023. 

The pending legislation was meant to clarify and codify his order. Even if the bill’s final version does not include religious and philosophical exemptions, the governor’s executive order would still stand, said Richard Hughes, a George Washington University law professor and leading vaccine law expert. 

While the ability to set new laws lies only with the legislature, the governor does have the ability to interpret those laws, which is what his executive order does, Hughes said.

If the executive order is not in line with what the legislature passes, however, it would remain vulnerable to court challenges.

“The governor could be checked by the courts on this interpretation,” he said.

Introduced Feb. 13, would have allowed parents to simply provide a written statement to exempt their child from vaccines for religious or philosophical reasons and applied to public, private and parochial schools.

In addition to loosening the medical exemption process and protecting medical professionals from disciplinary actions, it would also eliminate the position of state immunization officer and no longer require schools to report a violation if an unvaccinated child without an exemption attempted to enroll.  

At a Feb. 21 committee meeting, both Democratic and Republican senators spoke out in opposition to the bill. Many cited the measles outbreak that began in West Texas in late January as core to their concerns.

GOP Sen. Mike Oliverio read aloud from a letter written by one of his constituents, a retired physician.

“Loosening these requirements will eventually lead to outbreaks of these diseases, including in our children, as the number of vaccinated individuals fall,” he read. “I urge you to vote against this bill for the sake of West Virginia’s children.”

A number of Republican lawmakers also spoke in favor of the bill, which ultimately passed by a 20-12 vote, with two senators absent, before going to the House. 

The House bill that came out of committee this week is now expected to move to the floor, where it will be debated and potentially amended again. If the final House bill that passes still differs from the initial Senate bill, senators will need to either accept the House’s version or head to a conference committee to reconcile the two before sending it on for Morrisey’s signature. 

Testing constitutional limits, Republicans in at least 15 states have introduced legislation this year that would require the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms.

GOP lawmakers are attempting to follow Louisiana, which last year became the first state in the country to have such a requirement in the modern era. That law is currently blocked in five public school districts as a lawsuit makes its way through the courts; other districts are expected to comply with the law.

The federal lawsuit argues that the law violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The case is likely heading to the U.S. Supreme Court. In December, 18 Republican state attorneys general supporting Louisiana’s law to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is currently hearing the case.

Republican state lawmakers also have introduced bills that would require prayer, Bible reading or chaplains in public schools.

The Ten Commandments are the basis of Judeo-Christian doctrine. In Jewish and Christian theology, God gave the commandments directly to the Prophet Moses, as described in the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament of the Bible.

Supportive state legislators say the commandments are a historical example of law and not purely religious in nature. But while there are commandments that prohibit murder and stealing, some declare that there are no other gods above God, and that people must observe the Sabbath.

So far this year, no state has enacted legislation requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in public schools. Measures in Mississippi and Oklahoma died in committee. In Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, they failed after passing out of one legislative chamber. Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs similar GOP-led legislation last year.

Although Republicans dominate the legislature in each of those states, the bills have been a hard sell for Christian lawmakers who say they also value the Constitution.

“So, if we put the Ten Commandments up, which are Christian commandments, then we’re actually violating the plain language of our Constitution in our First Amendment,” Montana state Sen. Jason Ellsworth, a Republican, earlier this month, as reported in the Daily Montanan.

Eight Republicans joined every Democrat in the Montana Senate to defeat the measure.

‘A new day for religious freedom’

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court that Kentucky’s law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools was unconstitutional.

However, 45 years later, supporters of these measures believe there’s a new legal pathway considering the makeup of the nation’s high court. The Supreme Court now has a 6-3 conservative majority, with three of its members appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term.

“It is now a new day for religious freedom in America,” Republican state Sen. Bob Phalen, who sponsored the Montana bill, during a committee hearing last month. “The Supreme Court’s approach on religious displays has evolved over time.”

Indeed, in 2022, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in favor of a Washington state public school football coach who prayed with his team on the 50-yard line. Images of Moses and the Ten Commandments also appear in many U.S. government buildings, including the Supreme Court and the Capitol.

Bills requiring the display of the Ten Commandments are just one example of Republican state lawmakers attempting to insert religious doctrine into the school day.

On Tuesday, the Republican majority in the Kentucky Senate passed that would require schools to have a moment of silence at the beginning of each day, lasting at least one minute. It now heads to the state House. School staff would be prohibited from telling students how to use the time, but critics — including the ACLU and some members of the state's Jewish community — say students to pray.

In Texas, Republican senators this session legislation that would allow school districts to require every campus "to provide students and employees with an opportunity to participate in a period of prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious text" each day. That bill is sitting in committee.

In Idaho, a bill that Bible readings in schools is also in committee.

In Oklahoma, the state’s top education official last year that the Bible would be incorporated into school curricula. The ACLU in October Oklahoma over the proposal. The suit is ongoing.

And in Nebraska, that would allow local public school boards to hire chaplains is sitting in committee.

The U.S. Supreme Court school-sponsored prayer and Bible readings in 1963.

How it looks in Louisiana

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill last month to public schools, colleges and universities for how to comply with the novel law, which took effect in the new year.

The guidance came with four example posters — one including images of Moses and Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who represents a Louisiana district.

Requirements include that the posters of the Ten Commandments must be at least 11 inches by 14 inches and must be donated to schools; there is no legal penalty for not displaying the canonical edict.

Murrill also advised that the posters be included next to other historical documents, such as the Declaration of Independence.

Murrill said the law was “plainly constitutional.” A federal district court judge disagreed last year when he blocked the law, which “unconstitutional on its face” and “overtly religious.” It seems likely the U.S. Supreme Court will decide which side prevails.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

NEW ORLEANS – Three judges on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals considered arguments Thursday over a state law that requires displays of the Ten Commandments in every Louisiana public school classroom.

A group of nine parents, each on behalf of their children, sued to block the law shortly after the Louisiana Legislature and Gov. Jeff Landry approved it last spring. A lower court ruled in November the requirement violates the First Amendment’s prohibition against establishing a state-approved religion.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill appealed that ruling, which the 5th Circuit decided only applied to the five school districts that are among the defendants in the case. For every other district, at the start of this month.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are also representing the plaintiffs in the case. The law firm Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett is providing its services to the parents at no cost.

In addition to the five school districts, Louisiana Education Superintendent Cade Brumley and members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education are defendants.

Judge Catharina Haynes led the hearing conducted via Zoom because of the winter weather. She  questioned why the law was approved when Solicitor General Benjamin Agiuñaga presented his arguments.

“I’m respectful of the Ten Commandments, and I think everybody is,” said Haynes, federal court appointee of former President George W. Bush. “But that doesn’t mean it has to be put in every classroom in a state under the First Amendment.”

Aguiñaga said the law’s language notes the historical significance of the commandments in the foundation of the U.S. legal system merits their display in classrooms.

In addition to defending the law, Aguiñaga argued the plaintiffs filed their lawsuit too hastily because the displays had not yet been posted and no children had been harmed. The judges must rule first on whether the parents had the right to sue before considering the merits of their case.

Aguiñaga cited a 2007 ruling from the 5th Circuit in the case Staley v. Harris County, which involved a memorial display outside a Texas courthouse that included a Bible. Appellate judges first upheld a lower court ruling that deemed the monument unconstitutional, but the 5th Circuit later reversed its decision. The ruling declared that because the monument was being refurbished, it wasn’t clear yet what it would look like or whether it violated the First Amendment.

Jonathan Youngwood, an attorney for the plaintiffs, countered that legal theory in First Amendment cases does not require plaintiffs to be harmed before they seek relief.

He also stressed the religious intent of the law’s author, Rep. Dodie Horton, R-Haughton, who he quoted as saying: “It is so important that our children learn what God says is right and what he says is wrong.”

Youngwood also noted “religious references” to God and the Sabbath day in the first four commandments, which he said violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

“Of course the Ten Commandments are worthy of great respect and are profoundly meaningful to many, many people, and they have a place in our society,” Youngwood said. “They don’t have a place in this form in public schools.”

Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, an appointee of President Joe Biden, asked Aguiñaga if he could cite any prior court decisions that allowed displays of the Ten Commandments in a school setting. He could not but instead referenced a ruling that allowed students who are Jehovah’s Witnesses to abstain from the Pledge of Allegiance.

“The fact that they are allowed under the First Amendment to opt out of participating in the pledge doesn’t mean that they can also request that the flag be taken down or that the pledge not be said,” Aguiñaga said.

Judge Haynes voiced some skepticism of Aguiñaga’s reference to the Staley case, noting that few people are compelled to go to a courthouse while children are required to go to school.

Judge James Dennis, who former President Bill Clinton appointed to the federal bench, also heard arguments Thursday.

Haynes said the appellate judges would do their best to render a decision in the near future.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

But the biggest education story of the week — one that could change public schools forever — broke late Friday afternoon at a building two miles away. 

The U.S. Supreme Court, backed by the conservative supermajority Trump secured in his first term, agreed to hear an over whether the law permits public dollars to flow to an explicitly religious charter school. A decision in favor of the first-of-its kind Catholic school could further entangle the government and religion, dramatically altering the historic balance between church and state. 

“The stakes really couldn’t be higher,” said Derek Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina. While there are Catholic schools that have converted into , St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School’s “ultimate goal,” according to its , is “eternal salvation.”

“The issue,” Black said, “is whether a religious entity can operate a charter school that teaches religion as truth.” 

Trump supports and has vowed to bring back to public schools. But he’s just the most recognizable face of a larger movement that has been building toward this moment — one that includes governors and state lawmakers, right-leaning think tanks and . Those donors have not only to seat conservative justices, but also helped fund the years of that ultimately landed the school’s application before the high court. 

the courts have long misapplied Thomas Jefferson’s famous words about “a wall of separation between church and state.” Dismissed by most constitutional experts, this view holds that Jefferson’s aim was to keep the federal government from interfering with religious freedom — not to protect the government from the church.

The debate over the school will culminate in oral arguments before the Supreme Court in late April. 

Governors in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, who advocate for weaving the Bible into classroom instruction, have long awaited such a case. “Denying St. Isidore a charter solely because they’re religious is flat-out unconstitutional,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt . “This will be one of the most significant decisions of our lifetime.”

But his state’s GOP attorney general disagrees. Gentner Drummond’s office will argue that both state and federal laws clearly require charter schools to be non-sectarian. That view was summed up by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who  reversing the Oklahoma court’s decision “would drive a dagger into the very idea of public education and strike at the heart of our nation’s democratic foundations.” 

One justice who won’t be involved in the decision is Trump’s most recent Supreme Court appointee. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from deliberating over whether to hear the case. While the court offered no explanation, Barrett is a longtime friend of Nicole Garnett, the Notre Dame University law professor who advised the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa on the charter application. Garnett, who had no comment on Barrett’s recusal, also sits on the board of the , a conservative and libertarian legal organization that has influenced Trump and previous Republican presidents on . 

But attorneys for the school may not need Barrett’s vote. Four of the other conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — have all voiced support for greater religious freedom. Over a decade ago, Thomas wrote suggesting states could establish their own Christian denominations. More recently, in , Gorsuch referred to the “so-called” separation of church and state in a case over whether Boston should fly a Christian flag outside City Hall.

While Chief Justice John Roberts takes a more to court precedents, he has sided with the conservative majority in all of its most recent church-state cases. Two of them, and , focused on choice programs at religious schools. 

Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the state’s charter school board, to conclude that charter schools are inherently private organizations — not “state actors.” By keeping St. Isadore closed, the Alliance argues, Oklahoma is discriminating against religion and denying families more options. 

“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer,” Jim Campbell, the Alliance’s chief legal counsel, said in a statement.

In a brief in support of the charter school, eight GOP-led states said that prohibiting the funding of religious charter schools would compromise their ability to award grants or contracts to other sectarian organizations, like orphanages and groups providing scholarships. 

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools dismissed that fear and said a charter is not “merely a grant program.”

“The charter school is a state-created public school under Oklahoma law, and its actions are state actions,” the organization wrote in its brief. 

Black agreed, saying that the school’s argument “has no grounding in facts or law.”

The court’s decision to take the case left the law professor with an “enormous pit” in his stomach. Black worries the justices don’t fully understand the complexities of public education funding, particularly the differences between charters, vouchers and education savings accounts.

“That leads to either honest errors, misunderstandings or the ability of other people to lead you astray,” he said.

Experts say it’s hard to ignore the strides evangelical Republicans have made at elevating the importance of Christianity in the classroom.

Red states aren’t just passing voucher programs that allow parents to pay tuition at faith-based schools; they’re also incorporating Bible lessons into the curriculum. If the court rules in favor of the school, Preston Green, a University of Connecticut education and law professor, predicts religious organizations would suddenly “clamour” to open faith-based charters. 

“We’re on the verge of a new system where religious organizations are going to be among the players” running schools, he said. “How do states deal with that reality?”

In addition to allowing public education funds to support a specific faith, a decision in favor of religious charters could also have a devastating financial impact on traditional districts fighting to prevent enrollment loss, Black said. Oklahoma already offers a tax credit scholarship program for school choice, but it doesn’t always cover the full tuition at a private school. Families who want their child to have a Christian education might be more likely to flock to a religious charter school where the cost is fully covered, he explained. 

Robert Franklin, a former member of the state’s charter board, is already thinking about those ramifications. Like public school advocates in other red states, he’s concerned that expanding private school choice will hit rural schools the hardest and leave less funding for traditional schools.

“Oklahoma is a deeply red state,” he said. “I don’t think we have an appetite for raising taxes around here to support schools.” 

Franklin has a unique vantage point on the constitutional dispute that began over two years ago. He voted against St. Isidore’s contract in 2023 and says he felt “vindicated” last year when the state’s high court struck it down. But he’s less confident the U.S. Supreme Court will rule the same way.

“It’s a tumultuous moment,” he said. “There are a lot of forces pulling the other direction.”

The other five districts are among the defendants in a suit filed by nine families, charging that the law is unconstitutional. The mandate is on hold in East Baton Rouge, Livingston, Orleans, St. Tammany and Vernon parishes until the appellate court takes up the issue. State Superintendent Cade Brumley and members of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education are also defendants.

On Nov. 12, U.S. District Judge John DeGravelles issued a barring the law from taking effect, saying the state was not likely to prevail in the suit. Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church & State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the plaintiffs include atheists, Jews, and Presbyterian and Unitarian Universalist clergy, among others.

State Attorney General Liz Murrill filed an appeal asking that the mandate take effect in the 68 parishes not named in the lawsuit, and the appellate panel ruled in her favor.

The first mandate of its kind in more than 40 years,  calls for classroom posters at least 11 by 14 inches in size displaying a state-approved version of the biblical laws in a “large, easily readable font,” accompanied by a statement describing “the history of the Ten Commandments in American Public Education.”

Passed in June, the act requires that a specific, Protestant version be used, accompanied by a “context statement” asserting that “the Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American education for almost three centuries.” Supposed examples given include “The New England Primer,” created around 1688, McGuffey “Readers” from the early 1800s and textbooks published by Noah Webster, DeGravelles noted in his opinion.

“I can’t wait to be sued,” Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry told attendees at a GOP fundraiser this summer, as he prepared to sign the edict. “If you want to respect the rule of law, you got to start from the original law given, which was Moses’. He got his commandments from God.” 

Far-right lawmakers in , Utah and South Carolina this year considered but did not pass similar bills, while Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters ordered schools in his state to incorporate the Bible — “which includes the Ten Commandments,” he noted — as “an instructional support into the curriculum.” 

At the time the Louisiana suit was filed, legal analysts told The 74 the mandate appeared to set up a case that would essentially dare the U.S. Supreme Court to reinterpret the First Amendment’s opening line — “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Courts have repeatedly held that the Establishment Clause prohibits the creation or endorsement of a state religion.

The of making “false statements relating to a purported history and connection between the Ten Commandments and government and public education in the United States,” in one instance by fabricating a quote to that effect by James Madison, the Constitution’s primary author. In fact, the complaint says, what Madison wrote was that “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”

With 12 of its 17 active judges Republican appointees — six named by President-elect Donald Trump during his first term — the 5th Circuit is the  in the nation. It has become a key venue for  drafted by the conservative Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom and others hoping to advance cases that could allow the Supreme Court to shift precedents. The most notable of these has been Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi suit that overturned abortion rights.

In addition to appealing the Ten Commandments lawsuit, Murrill recently sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, arguing that a major law requiring a host of protections for students with disabilities is unconstitutional. Ostensibly, the lawsuit seeks to overturn a Biden administration rule that Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 protects those who experience gender dysphoria, a clinical diagnosis given to some transgender people.

If Murrill succeeds, however, the case could create a precedent weakening laws against numerous prohibitions on in-school discrimination, according to disability advocates and attorneys cited by the New Orleans news site The Lens, which against federal officials.

Opponents of a that requires displays of the Ten Commandments in Louisiana classrooms point out that its language includes a quote attributed to one of the nation’s founding fathers that he didn’t actually say.

But that may not matter if a federal judge finds testimony one expert gave Monday in court irrelevant.

Those comments came Monday during arguments for a lawsuit that seeks to block the law from taking effect Jan. 1. U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, heard from a professor who called into question whether the Ten Commandments is a historical document that influenced America’s founding, as supporters of the law claim.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

While many see the legislation only for its provisions requiring classrooms to display a Ten Commandments poster, its other and perhaps more significant purpose, as evidenced in itself, is to try to establish an official record that ties the origins of U.S. law to a Protestant Christian doctrine. If its advocates succeed, the Louisiana law could revise a national historical record that has long supported the separation of church and state.

The problem is that some of what lawmakers placed into the legislation is flat out fake and based on myth, according to Steven Green, professor of law, history and religious studies from Willamette University, who testified on behalf of a group of parents challenging the constitutionality of the Louisiana mandate. The parents filed the lawsuit with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.

Judge deGravelles heard arguments Monday on whether Green should be allowed to testify as an expert witness in the case and whether the court should grant a preliminary injunction to stop schools from complying with the new law before a decision is made or dismiss the case altogether.

The judge said he plans to rule on the matter by Nov. 15. School system leaders in the five parishes where the plaintiffs reside – East Baton Rouge, Livingston, Orleans, St. Tammany and Vernon — have agreed to hold off on placing the Ten Commandments posters in classrooms until mid-November and aren’t legally required to do so until Jan. 1, 2025.

The bill lawmakers passed earlier this year contains what it purports to be a quote from James Madison, the fourth president and the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution: “(w)e have staked the whole future of our new nation … upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.”

Green, an expert on First Amendment issues involving school prayer, religious displays and the separation of church and state, told the court the quote cannot be traced back to any primary historical documents related to Madison or any peer-reviewed research papers from scholars who have studied him.

Several different versions of the quote exist online as people continue to tweak it for various reasons.

Green went on to discount many of the other passages in the bill, noting that none of America’s founding documents — such as the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights — make any mention of the Ten Commandments. The same holds true for the Magna Carta, Mayflower Compact and Northwest Ordinance, all referenced in House Bill 71.

Calvinist and Protestant church leaders published the early school materials, such as the New England Primers and McGuffey Readers, referenced in the legislation before a public education system was well-established. Those materials referenced the Ten Commandments only two or three times among hundreds of lessons and were eventually omitted as education became more secular over time, Green said.

There were many different religions and religious sects in the early American colonies, so Madison and the other founders were very aware that any establishment of religion or indication of religious favoritism would cause discord, Green said. Some of the nation’s early criminal laws are indirectly based on the principles of the Ten Commandments and other philosophical writings, but the historical record shows no direct connection between any religion and the founding of America, he said.

“The influence is indirect, at best,” Green said. “We have a lot of founding myths, and this is one of them.”

The state, led by Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill, did not attempt to defend the historical accuracy of the claims within the bill while also not conceding to the plaintiffs’ version. Rather than try to refute Green’s testimony, the state’s lawyers argued that history is irrelevant at this juncture in the case, and the court should not allow Green to testify as an expert witness.

The attorney general’s team of lawyers also argued Green is biased because he previously served as the legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

While questioning Green under cross examination, the state’s lawyers tried several times to argue that he was testifying as a legal expert rather than a historian, but the judge seemed annoyed with the state’s lawyers for continuing to suggest it.

“He’s not qualified as a legal expert,” deGravelles said emphatically. “That’s what I said about three times.”

Other arguments from Murrill’s team could prove more persuasive at getting Green’s testimony struck from the record and winning a dismissal of the case. Her attorneys argued that the court should at least see the posters before ruling on whether to block the law.

The state’s lawyers pointed out that no case law exists in which a court has ever adjudicated an “imaginary” religious display that no one has seen.

“We think it’s premature,” Murrill told reporters following the hearing.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that their clients include Catholic and Jewish families who shouldn’t be forced to look at Protestant scripture. The law requires the display of the Ten Commandments found in the King James Version of the Bible, which differs from the Catholic and Jewish scriptures. The state did not refute the claim that the posters are Protestant religious displays.

At one point in the hearing, the state’s lawyers presented an example of a Ten Commandments poster that would meet the minimum requirements set in the law. When the judge saw it, he noted the font was so small that it was nearly impossible to read from where he was sitting.

The law calls for the displays to be at least 11 inches by 14 inches.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on and .

He praised a new breed of “patriot pastors” who are mobilizing the faithful to engage in “biblical citizenship” by voting and getting involved on school boards. He’s among the far right religious who say former President Donald Trump is God’s choice for president and that Christians should not only participate in government and politics, but .

Republican leaders have spent a lot of energy this year putting those words into action. Much of the spotlight has been on Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters, who mandated that schools stock classrooms with Bibles. Louisiana passed a law requiring schools to post the 10 Commandments in classrooms, the subject of , while the Texas Education Agency has proposed a reading curriculum that includes stories from the Old and New testaments. 

But the question of whether those ideas will resonate with Christian voters on Nov. 5 is harder to answer.

One suggests they might not. On a long list of concerns influencing Christians this election, public schools ranked near the bottom, with less than 30% choosing it as a reason to vote for a presidential candidate. The economy and border security topped the list for at least 60% of voters. 

A lot of churchgoers are “still leery of bringing Christianity overtly into public institutions,” said George Barna, who runs the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, a small conservative college outside Phoenix. “They are more likely to desire the freedom to believe and practice their faith of choice, with their family, as they desire, without government intrusion.”

His recent poll suggests that many practicing Christians are so disillusioned by both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump that they may not even vote. Barna estimated that as many as 104 million “people of faith” — and of those, roughly 32 million regular churchgoers — won’t show up at the polls. 

Trump tried to shore up his support among the faithful this week during a with conservative pastors, suggesting a failed assassination attempt against him in July was a sign. “God saved me for a purpose,” he said. Conservative leaders are counting on Christians to support their preferred candidates — up and down the ballot. 

Walters co-authored an earlier this year with Steve Deace, a conservative talk show host, and David Barton, whose organization teaches history from a Christian perspective. In grave terms, they urged Christians to vote for Trump if they want schools to embrace their values.

“Churches and community groups must transform into centers of evangelical activism, educating and equipping members to take a stand in this cultural and spiritual battle,” they wrote. “The election ahead is more than a political contest; it is our opportunity to affirm our commitment to our nation’s Judeo-Christian values.”

But that message doesn’t always grab voters, said Kendal Sachierri, a conservative Republican running for state Senate in Oklahoma and a former Spanish teacher. A Second Amendment advocate, she defeated an incumbent who to increase penalties for having a gun on school property. 

When she was going door-to-door during the primary, Sachierri said she talked to voters who were unhappy with public schools.

“But no one was like, ‘We need Bibles in the classroom,’ ” she said. When she taught at Newcastle High School, south of Oklahoma City, she had both English and Spanish versions of the Bible available for students. “Did I ever make a kid use it? No.”

‘Biblical foundation’

In local races this year, there have been signs that the public’s support for candidates who align with fundamentalist Christian groups is waning. School board hopefuls backed by Moms for Liberty haven’t fared nearly as well in primary races as they did two years ago when they earned school board seats across the country. 

The organization primarily advocates against lessons on gender and sexuality, but their summit last year also featured Tim Barton, David Barton’s son and Wallbuilders president. He preached that depends on rebuilding its “biblical foundation.” 

Whether Christian voters have tired of such rhetoric enough to stay home on Election Day is hard to forecast, said Michael Emerson, a religion and public policy researcher at Rice University. 

“Attempting to estimate who will vote and who will not is unreliable,” he said. “As we have seen in the past, especially with Trump, people often say they are not voting, or not voting for him, to pollsters, but then go ahead and vote for him.”

Christians, in fact, have an on elections, he said. 

That’s especially true in Texas, where frequently mix. In conservative communities, it’s almost expected that a candidate’s platform will include references to Christianity, said Calvin Jillison, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. 

“If you’re in a red district, you better be able to speak about these issues in a way that you know voters will respond,” he said. 

The state’s official calls for schools to require instruction from the Bible, and wealthy conservative donors have thrown their support behind candidates who espouse a “” in public schools. 

They include state school board candidate Brandon Hall, a political newcomer who wants to emulate Walters’s effort in Oklahoma to purchase classroom Bibles.

“This is amazing. Let’s do it in Texas!” he wrote on .

For Hall, who identified himself as a pastor in campaign documents but also works for a , promising to promote in schools was a winning strategy. He sailed past a 22-year incumbent in the March primary with over 53% of the vote in a Fort Worth-area district.

Since then, he’s been busy promoting the Texas Education Agency’s new K-5 reading curriculum that features Bible stories and emphasizes the evangelism of the nation’s founding. As The 74 first reported in May, critics say it doesn’t reflect the religious diversity of Texas students and borders on proselytizing. (Wallnau has on X to ask state board members to vote for it next month.)

“Why do liberals hate the new curriculum so much? Second graders will learn courage through the story of Queen Esther,” Hall in September after speaking to a community group about the program.

Hall didn’t respond to voicemails or messages on Facebook — and hasn’t participated in candidate interviews with .

“Maybe he’s not concerned,” considering the makeup of the board has shifted more in recent years, said Rayna Glaser, his Democratic opponent. 

But as she attends campaign events and house gatherings to meet voters, she’s hoping that Christians will consider what could happen if the public school curriculum becomes subsumed by theology. 

“We’ve got the Quran. We’ve got the Book of Mormon. Do you want Satan in there? Because I know you don’t want Satanism being taught in school,” she said. “As a Christian woman who believes in God and believes the Bible, I feel like if you open [schools] to one, you really have to open them to others.”

is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Q: Can a school ban a child from praying, or do schools have to provide accommodations for children with certain beliefs? – Isaac T., 17, Flint, Michigan

The case also has large ramifications for the nation’s charter school sector, potentially settling a debate over whether charters are public or private. 

Last summer, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled against St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The school appealed the case to the Supreme Court last fall.

A proposed Christian charter school is taking its case to the U.S. Supreme Court, hopeful that a conservative supermajority will offer a sympathetic ear to the notion that schools that practice religion should not be barred from receiving public funds.

and Oklahoma’s filed separate petitions with the court Monday, asking the justices to decide an issue that could not only upset accepted norms about charter schools, but radically shift legal understanding about the boundaries between church and state. 

While the court might not make a call for months, several experts predict that if it takes up the case, the justices in the majority would likely rule in favor of St. Isidore.

“I believe that if the Supreme Court decides to review it … they will reverse the Oklahoma decision and allow the religious charter school,” Martha Field, a Harvard University law professor, said last month on emerging school models held at Harvard. “I would not support such a decision, but I believe it is coming.”

The case centers on a dispute over whether or not a public charter school, where students practice religion as part of the curriculum, violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In April, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, argued that state officials broke the law when they approved the charter — an argument the state Supreme Court backed in June. But attorneys for the school and religious freedom advocates say St. Isidore is essentially a private contractor that receives public funding to offer a service — not an arm of the government. 

“The Supreme Court has made it clear repeatedly in the last few years that if the government opens up a program to private organizations …  it can’t then say ‘But if you’re religious, you’re not eligible,’ ” said Phil Sechler, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian law firm and advocacy group that represents the charter board. “That’s essentially what Oklahoma did.”

In response to the petitions, Drummond warned that allowing religious charter schools would open the “floodgates” to non-Christian religions like “radical Islam or even the Church of Satan.”

In its brief, the charter board said the state’s stance toward “minority faiths” is still “open hostility toward religion” and poses a “grave threat” to religious parents.

“Those with progressive values may send their children to progressive charter schools on the state’s dime. Those who subscribe to the principles of Montessori education may send their children to Montessori charter schools for free,” the petition states. “But religious parents may not avail themselves of this same benefit because the would-be charter school they desire is religious.”

‘State actors’

During oral arguments in Oklahoma, one judge asked whether the state was being used as a “test case” to overturn prevailing legal opinions on church-state separation. A national movement of wants the courts to rule in favor of greater religious freedom in schools. 

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, an advocacy organization, is suing over Louisiana’s law that classrooms post the 10 Commandments, and is currently over Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters’s mandate that teachers use the Bible in their lessons. 

But one element that could cast doubt on the Supreme Court’s willingness to hear the Oklahoma case is its refusal last year to take about charter schools — one that religious freedom advocates hoped would have paved the way for faith-based charters. 

In , three families sued the school, saying its dress code requiring girls to wear skirts violated their constitutional rights. The charter founders argued that as a nonprofit, the school should be free to enforce rules in line with its traditional values, raising the question of whether a charter school is public or private. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said no, and the school appealed to the Supreme Court.

While the justices asked for the U.S. solicitor general’s , suggesting some were intrigued by the issues presented, they ultimately turned it down.

As the school’s founders argued in Peltier, supporters of religious charters say that nonprofits, including churches, don’t automatically become “state actors” because they receive public funds. At that same Harvard conference, Mike Moreland, a Villanova University law professor, offered up an analogy.

“Boeing, by entering into an agreement to produce airplanes as a government contractor for the Pentagon, doesn’t become a state actor,” he said. Charter schools, therefore, don’t “turn into state actors for purposes of First Amendment analysis.”

Those who agree with him point to a 1982 case, , in which the Supreme Court said a private school receiving substantial public funding to educate troubled teens was not acting under the “color of state law” when it fired six employees. 

The Ninth Circuit reached a similar conclusion in a more that involved a charter school, but focused on employment issues rather than what students learn in the classroom. 

Those cases could indicate which way the court would lean if it takes the case, said William Jeynes, an at California State University Long Beach, the third panelist at the Harvard event. 

“The Supreme Court loves precedent,” he said. 

Opponents of religious charter schools say religious freedom proponents are fueling a non-existent debate. 

”State laws are clear,” said Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “Charter schools are public schools created by the government, and the government is not allowed to establish any religious public schools.”

‘Incredibly popular’

Former Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal, raised the possibility of a religious charter school in a in which the court ruled 5-4 that officials could not exclude a Christian school from a state tax credit scholarship program simply because it was religious.

“What about charter schools?” he asked in his dissent, saying that the court’s ruling introduced “uncertainty” about the distinction between public and nonpublic schools. He reiterated his concern in , a 2022 opinion in which the court ruled 6-3 that states with school choice programs can’t discriminate against schools that teach religion.

The case focused on a Maine program that pays families to attend private school if their own communities lack a public high school. Breyer wrote that requiring states to fund religious schools blurred the lines between public and private entities. He asked if that “transformation” means that districts with charters “must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to give their children a religious education?”

Six months later, Oklahoma’s former Attorney General John O’Connor and state Solicitor General Zach West expanded on the majority’s opinion to say religious organizations should not be prohibited from opening charter schools. When he took office in 2023, Drummond, O’Connor’s replacement, threw out his predecessor’s interpretation.

Since then, Drummond has been at odds with fellow Republicans on the issue, including Walters and Gov. Kevin Stitt. Despite his warning that the charter violates the law, the state’s virtual charter school board voted last October to approve the contract with the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa. That prompted Drummond’s lawsuit.

When the school and the charter board lost, Stitt said the decision “sent a troubling message that religious groups are second-class participants in our education system. Charter schools are incredibly popular in Oklahoma — and all we’re saying is: We can’t choose who gets state dollars based on a private entity’s religious status.”

Even after the state Supreme Court ruled against the school, the state charter board initially refused to rescind its contract and then joined St. Isidore in appealing the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Under pressure from Drummond, who called the charter “a serious threat to the religious liberty of all four million Oklahomans,” the board finally voided the contract in August. 

While the school was prepared to serve up to 500 students this fall, it received less than half that number of applications.

Despite the court’s traditional deference to existing case law, Field noted that the current justices haven’t shown the for previous opinions they disagree with. Overturning is just one example she cited.  

For someone who clerked for former Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s — when the court prayer and Bible readings in the classroom — she said it’s been disconcerting to see the legal ground shift so radically. 

“It seems that a lot of people here don’t like the Warren court,” she told the Harvard attendees.  “When I went to law school, separatism was the doctrine, and we all believe whatever we learned in law school.”

During several hours of public testimony before the State Board of Education, multiple speakers noted negative or inaccurate representations of Judaism and a lack of attention to contemporary Jewish life or Americans. 

Sharyn Vane, one of the speakers who addressed the board, called the new program, branded as Bluebonnet Learning, “wildly problematic in its depictions of Jews and Judaism.” She referred to a second grade lesson on Queen Esther in which Haman, an official of the Persian king, cast lots to decide when to kill the Jews. The lesson includes students playing a game of dice. “This is shocking, offensive and just plain wrong. Do we ask elementary schoolers to pretend to be Hitler?”

Another speaker pointed to how fourth graders are asked to highlight positive aspects of the Crusades.

“We were being murdered en masse,” Emily Bourgeois, public affairs director for Shalom Austin, said about the persecution of Jews during the Middle Ages. “There’s not really a whole lot of benefit to that.” 

The public’s comments, while more critical than favorable, demonstrated the intense pressure on board members to either tone down the emphasis on the Bible, add more references to other world religions or accept the proposed curriculum as is. The Texas Education Agency, which developed it, now has until Oct. 14 to complete any revisions before the board votes in November on a final list of approved materials. Groups opposed to the biblical content have urged the board to reject lessons that they say come close to proselytizing. But conservative organizations, , have encouraged their networks in recent weeks to bombard members with emails calling for approval of the state-developed materials with no changes. 

​​”The Bible is the single most impactful piece of literature. It is the single biggest influence on the formation of Western civilization,” Aaron Harris, a who has been to the materials, said during the hearing. “Any denial of that fact is just silly.”

Some board members seem to have already made up their minds. In her , Audrey Young, a Republican whose district includes Houston, said not including the Bible in the curriculum will “continue to severely limit [students’] opportunity for academic success.”

“Separation of church and state as a legal concept does not mean the two realms never interact,” she wrote. “It only means that one does not control the other.”

Julie Pickren, a conservative Republican board member — who often posts Bible verses on social media — defended the Bluebonnet Learning curriculum throughout the meeting, saying she’s received 12,000 emails in favor of the program, but just a “minuscule” number opposed.  

‘Y’all must have done something right,” she told Colin Dempsey, a director at the agency that has managed the review process.

Others, however, are still probing for information on who influenced the development of the curriculum, which was adapted from Core Knowledge Language Arts, a widely used reading program published by Amplify. At least twice, Board Member Pam Little, also a Republican, asked whether the agency engaged a religious committee to provide input on the lessons. 

The state has posted a list of the members of the But a spokesman for the agency said he was unaware of a separate group of faith leaders who were involved in the process.

One group involved in the development of the materials — and now — is the , a right-leaning organization. Two experts with the foundation, Thomas Lindsay and Courtnie Bagley, worked as “subject matter experts” on the lessons. Lindsay was also on the advisory board. The group’s involvement has spurred some critics to raise questions about whether improving reading scores is the primary objective of the new curriculum.

“Gov. Greg Abbott’s education commissioner is outsourcing the education of a generation of Texas school children to people more interested in pushing political agendas than in educating kids,” Carisa Lopez, deputy director of the Texas Freedom Network, said during a press conference Tuesday. “That should be alarming to all parents regardless of their religious or political beliefs.”

Last month, the watchdog group, which monitors far-right movements, issued on the curriculum, saying the authors present Christian beliefs as “straightforwardly true.” Author David Brockman, a religious studies scholar at Rice University, cited, for example, a third grade lesson on Christianity that states, “In the years that followed, many heard about the resurrection of Jesus.” 

“Students may well gain the impression that the Resurrection was a historical event — a faith claim a public school curriculum has no business conveying,” Brockman wrote.

State officials, meanwhile, have already accepted many of the corrections submitted by the public, according to now posted on the agency’s website. Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University, submitted dozens of corrections. The state revised, for example, a line that said the word “genesis” originated with the first book of the Bible. But they made no changes to the statement: “God gave King Solomon wisdom on all things.” Chancey commented that the wording promotes “a particular religious belief.”

‘A position of authority’

Bluebonnet Learning, which will be optional for districts to use, is just one of 142 programs in reading and math publishers submitted to the board. The fact that Tuesday’s speakers exclusively spoke about Bluebonnet highlights the intense controversy the Bible-infused curriculum has ignited since late May when the agency released it. 

Expecting the polarizing comments, Board Chair Aaron Kinsey asked Austin Kinghorn, a deputy state attorney general, to weigh in on the constitutionality of the curriculum. Kinghorn asserted, as most supporters of the curriculum have, that it’s permissible to teach about religion in public school and that the Bible played a pivotal role in American history. But if lessons amount to proselytizing, he said, they would violate the First Amendment. 

Multiple times, he noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in , in which the court upheld a high school coach’s right to pray in public at football games, as the most recent legal test of whether references to religion in school cross the line. Coercion, he said “doesn’t exist nearly as often” as some perceive.

But other legal experts said the Kennedy decision doesn’t necessarily answer the questions raised by the Texas curriculum, or similar actions in other GOP-led states. In Oklahoma, state Superintendent Ryan Walters has that teachers use the Bible in instruction, and in Louisiana, a new law requires the 10 Commandments posted in all classrooms. 

“The entire premise of the Kennedy ruling is that the coach was not acting from a position of authority, but was acting solely in his private capacity and that those who joined him in his private prayer did so voluntarily,“ said Derek Black, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina. Schools can “expose students to portions of the Bible as an example of literature or religious text, as long as it is in the context of exposure to lots of other historical literature. But they cannot teach the Bible as religion or truths that someone should or should not follow.”

‘World religions’

High-level debates over what children learn are nothing new in Texas. 

About a decade ago, the state of an online curriculum system, called CSCOPE, after conservatives complained it was anti-American. The majority of districts in the state used the materials, but some critics didn’t like that lessons introduced students to other world religions, like Islam. 

A similar controversy derailed plans in 2022 to adopt a new . Republican lawmakers argued the material would violate the state’s law against teaching “critical race theory” because it included lessons on race and LGBTQ issues, among other topics.

For reading, the state spent $19 million in 2020 to purchase the Amplify program. At the time, the state rejected two of the units Amplify submitted that covered the world’s major religions. As The 74 first reported, the state asked Amplify to add some stories from the Bible, like the one on Queen Esther. The company wrote a draft, but it ultimately bowed out and didn’t bid on the next phase of the project

In 2022, the state contracted with Boston-based Public Consulting Group to further revise the Amplify lessons. Notes from an April 2022 “project kick-off meeting,” which the Texas Education Agency shared with The 74, show officials planned to “bring world religions back in.” Another notation said a second grade unit on , which focuses on mythology, would be a “form of teaching other religion.”

The proposed materials, however, include sparse mentions of Islam and Hinduism while predominantly featuring stories and passages from the Bible. And religions like Sikhism aren’t mentioned at all.

That lack of representation “takes away the opportunity for students to develop a genuine understanding of practices and perspectives outside their own,” Upneet Kaur, senior education manager for , told the board. “Sikh students know the devastating impact of this all too well.”

But Carole Haynes, one of the nearly 250 reviewers the state hired to examine the proposed materials, wrote in a that countries where other religions are dominant are unlikely to “allow Christianity to be included in their school curriculum.”

“It’s so important that we have children read these biblical stories,” wrote Haynes, who is a curriculum consultant. She mentioned a kindergarten lesson on the that highlights Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. “It wasn’t politicization. It wasn’t teaching them Christianity. It was teaching them moral character. That’s where our kids are deficient.” 

Many also can’t read on grade level. Roughly half of Texas’s elementary school students are proficient, and this year’s show declines in the percentages of third and fifth graders meeting expectations. Fourth graders made a 3 percentage point gain. 

Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath has said Bluebonnet Learning will improve students’ vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. His presentations for lawmakers point to reading gains in districts that have piloted some earlier versions of the lessons. 

But Board Member Tom Maynard, a Republican, said overall, results from those districts have been “spotty.”

While the public’s comments during Tuesday’s hearing overwhelmingly focused on the religious aspects of the program, there was also ample discussion over whether the program follows the research on teaching students to read. Dempsey, the agency official managing the review process, said the “product scored very well” among the reviewers, who examined whether it covers state standards and is considered “suitable” for classrooms.

“I think the big question is,” Maynard said, ‘Does it work?’ ”

And because of the pandemic, they say they don’t have to. 

A state official told The 74 that the work — an $84 million contract the state signed in March 2022 — falls under a Gov. Greg Abbott issued to speed up delivery of masks, vaccines and other critical supplies during the height of the pandemic. That means the paper trail that typically follows people who contract with the state, including work and payment reports, doesn’t exist in this case, the official said. 

Some members of the state board of education, which will vote on the curriculum in November, are accusing education Commissioner Mike Morath and his staff of a lack of transparency.

“I did not get a lot of my questions answered when it came to who wrote the curriculum,” said Evelyn Brooks, a Republican board member whose district includes the Fort Worth suburbs. She’s one of at least three members who asked officials at the Texas Education Agency for more details. “It’s hard and it shouldn’t be. Someone knows this information.” 

Morath said the overhaul will bring classical education to over 2 million K-5 students in Texas. The model is designed to strengthen kids’ reading skills while also teaching them culture, art and history, including the Bible’s influence. Interviewed in early May, the commissioner would only say that “hundreds of people” worked on the project.

But that doesn’t satisfy board members who say the curriculum borders on proselytizing and promotes a distinctly evangelical view of American history.

A teacher’s guide for a third-grade lesson on ancient Rome, for example, devotes eight pages to the life and ministry of Jesus — presenting many of the events as historical facts, scholars say. But the Islamic prophet Muhammad isn’t named anywhere. A kindergarten lesson on “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” draws parallels to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. And an art appreciation lesson walks 5-year-olds through the creation story from the Book of Genesis.

“Who are the people that sat down in this fancy room and said this is the knowledge that every Texas student should have?” asked Staci Childs, a Democrat who represents the Houston area. She said she understands teaching the importance of religion in American history, but thinks the balance is off. “I just don’t think that it’s fair to have that many biblical references in the text in public schools across the state.” 

The comments come a day before a Friday deadline for the public to or suggest corrections to the curriculum.

Texas won’t force districts to use the materials, but is offering up to $60 per student — a total of $540 million — to any that adopt the program. That’s an incentive many are unlikely to turn down at a time school systems are and calling for to offset them. 

The controversy is occurring against the backdrop of GOP support for teaching the Bible in several states, including Texas’s neighbors. A new Louisiana law requires schools to hang the 10 Commandments in classrooms, while Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters is that educators use the Bible for instruction.

But no state has invested as much time and money as Texas in connecting its curriculum to Judeo-Christian messages.

As The 74 first reported in May, Morath signed a contract for K-5 reading and K-12 math materials with the Boston-based Public Consulting Group. In turn, the organization subcontracted with curriculum writers and experts, including officials at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation and .

At Hillsdale, Kathleen O’Toole, who leads work with charter schools affiliated with the Christian college, said her team only “offered resources on a few units having to do with early American history.” The college performed the work for free, she said.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation declined to comment on its role. 

The contract Morath signed with the Public Consulting Group requires the company to submit monthly progress reports “documenting all subcontractor payments.” But when The 74 requested the documents in June under the state’s , Sherry Mansell, a coordinator in the general counsel’s office, said the state dropped the requirement because of the governor’s pandemic emergency order. The absence of those spending reports “understandably could cause some confusion,” Mansell wrote in an email. In a follow-up, she said the agency is “ensuring we receive the goods and services as specified in our contract.”

The Public Consulting Group did not respond to phone calls or emails. 

When Mansell said no reports were available, The 74 asked an education agency spokesman to identify who wrote the new lessons and how much they were paid.

He didn’t respond until asked again Tuesday night. This time, he replied “absolutely” when asked if the public had a right to know the information and emailed a series of zip files containing over 100 pages of Public Consulting Group invoices for the past three years. None of them contained details about the religious lessons’ authorship. Reached again Wednesday, the spokesman declined to address the matter further.

‘Political considerations’

If board members are expected to approve the materials in November, Brooks said, they should know who wrote them.

She isn’t the only Republican on the board with reservations. Pat Hardy, a longtime GOP board member, said the state developed the new materials to placate the far-right wing of the party, which has pushed hard in recent years to expand Christianity’s presence in public schools. 

“They’re going to appeal to the Christian nationalists with their Bible stories. They’re just trying to gather votes,” said Hardy, who to a candidate who accused her of not being conservative enough. Nonetheless, she’ll remain in office for the vote on the curriculum in November. 

The Republican members’ views could hold sway on a board where they retain 10 of the 15 seats. Morath needs at least eight members to vote yes on the proposed curriculum for it to pass. 

Other Republicans on the board were less outspoken. Tom Maynard, whose district includes Austin, said there are “definite positives” in the curriculum as well as some needed “cleanup,” but didn’t offer specifics. Keven Ellis and L.J. Francis said they would save their comments until after a September meeting when the board will review the materials.

Questions about who wrote the biblical lessons are especially salient “when the curriculum is so shocking,” Democratic Rep. James Talarico, a seminary student and former teacher, told The 74. Talarico has been critical of the materials’ minimal attention to other world religions.

At a House education committee hearing Monday, he grilled Morath about whether “political considerations” influenced the overhaul. Talarico specifically named , vice chair of the board of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and an oil magnate who has donated millions of dollars to conservative candidates — from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to running for the state legislature. 

“Is the Texas Public Policy Foundation an expert in curriculum design?” Talarico asked the commissioner. He also noted that the state unveiled the material four days after the Texas GOP adopted calling for required Bible instruction in public schools. “Are those two related?” he asked.

Morath dismissed the suggestion. The agency sought expertise from a “pretty broad swath of individuals,” he said. Those included experts in Texas history, which figures prominently in the curriculum. Lessons with engaging stories, including from ancient texts like the Bible, can improve students’ vocabulary and comprehension skills, he told the lawmakers. He shared data from Lubbock, one of the districts that piloted early versions of the curriculum, where the percentage of third graders meeting expectations increased from 36% in 2019 to 47% this year. 

But Talarico questioned whether teachers are adequately trained to respond to student’s questions about religious topics raised in the curriculum like the Resurrection of Jesus and the Eucharist.

“When you’re talking about faith and you’re talking about theology, you’re working with fire,” he said. “These are serious topics. To me, this seems not only reckless, it seems that it could do great harm to students, whether they’re Christian or not.”

Republicans on the committee said their constituents have been “craving” such lessons. 

Rep. Matt Schaefer rejected Talarico’s concerns that students of other faiths might feel left out. Other major world religions, like Islam and Hinduism, he said, “did not have an equal impact on the founding belief systems of our country.” 

Biblical experts who have analyzed the new lessons, however, find inaccuracies and say some of the material is misleading. 

The Texas Freedom Network, which describes itself as a “watchdog for monitoring far-right issues,” released an of the curriculum Thursday, saying several lessons give students a distorted view of history.

The authors of the curriculum “smuggled” in lengthy passages on Christianity when a sentence or two would have been sufficient, David R. Brockman, a religious studies scholar at Rice University and the report’s lead author, said in an interview. He pointed, for example, to a reading from the Book of Matthew on the Last Supper as part of a fifth grade study of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting.

“I really wanted to keep an open mind,” he said, adding that the emphasis on the Bible makes sense when teaching students about Western civilization, but doesn’t help them learn to live in a diverse society. “Are they looking purely backward or are they looking forward? Texas students are not going to be living in 1787.”

Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said he submitted over 80 comments to the state. Some focus on a second grade lesson about , which talks about her faith in God, prayer and protecting the Jewish people’s freedom to worship.

The curriculum authors edited biblical material “to their liking to make it more religious,” he said. “The Book of Esther never mentions God, prayer or worship — not even once.” 

His analysis of at least four other lessons that include Bible verses showed the authors exclusively relied on the New International Version of the text, a he called a “distinctively evangelical translation” that was “made by evangelical scholars for evangelical Christians.”

A spokesman for the education agency did not address specific criticisms but said officials would examine potential inaccuracies revealed in the comments.

‘Will it teach students to read?’

Pam Little, another Republican board member, said her constituents are split “about 50-50” over the significance of the biblical material. Some conservative parents, she said, are upset “because they don’t feel like public schools are the place to teach Christianity.”

But others, she said, are more concerned with whether the lessons will improve student performance. This year’s elementary test scores show there’s still a long way to go. The results were , with declines in third and fifth grade and an increase in fourth. 

The real question is “Will it teach students to read?” Little said. “For some reason, we seem to be having problems in Texas with that.”

With schools set to start in a couple weeks, most parents of kindergartners are working to make sure to get required vaccinations for their children before sending them off to school.

But not all parents. Over the last decade, more parents have opted their children out of vaccination requirements through the use of nonmedical religious exemption – especially in recent years following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number rarely rises above a percent or two of an incoming kindergarten class, typically accounting for no more than a couple hundred children per year. But that means that in the years since 2002, a total of more than 10,000 kindergartners have attended public and private schools without vaccination records, according to historical data from the Maryland Department of Health.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

The rising percent of religious exemptions in recent years may point to increasing rates of vaccine hesitancy among families, said Daniel Salmon, a professor and director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“We’ve seen a post-COVID increase,” Salmon said. “With COVID … things got really polarized with more misinformation and disinformation. Vaccinations became a very political topic. And that’s not helpful.”

Maryland law requires that children have a handful of vaccinations when they enter kindergarten, in order to protect themselves and their classmates from transmissible diseases, such as measles, polio and chickenpox, among others. Children can be exempted if there is a medical reason they cannot receive a vaccine or a religious restriction against it.

The process to invoke the religious exemption in Maryland is simple. Parents can just sign a form that says: “Because of my bona fide religious beliefs and practices, I object to any vaccine(s) being given to my child.”

Elizabeth Elliott, president of the Maryland Association of School Health Nurses, said she understands the need for exemptions, but she said it is also important that as many children as possible be vaccinated.

“Herd immunity is really important for those of us – kids, staff members, families – in a school community that, for medical reasons, can’t be vaccinated,” Elliott said. “It’s incumbent upon the rest of use to vaccinate ourselves and our children to protect those of use who can’t have the vaccine because it’s unsafe.”

But tracking vaccine hesitancy is a tricky task, according to Salmon, and there are many factors that contribute to why some families don’t get their kids vaccinated.

“It’s really hard to answer that question based on data, based on how you measure vaccine hesitancy,” he said. “So the best measure we have is the proportion of children entering school who have a nonmedical exemption.”

The earliest data readily available from the state is from the 2002-2003 school year, in which 0.2% of kindergartners got a religious exemption, or about 126 kids out of roughly 63,000 entering kindergarten that year.

The rate increased steadily over the years: Ten years later, for example, about 0.6% of kids had religious exemptions, resulting in about 419 kids not receiving vaccinations in 2012-2013.

Religious exemptions spiked in 2019-2020 when 2.7% of kindergartners, or 1,641 kids, opted out of vaccination requirements. The COVID-19 pandemic went into full swing in the spring of 2020, so those families would have opted out prior to the the rise in cases in the United States.

Since the 2021-2022 school year, at least 1 percent of kindergartners in Maryland had a medical exemption – a couple hundred a year.

While the percent and numbers have increased, Salmon believes the numbers are not rising high enough for major concern.

“It’s a pretty small number,” he said. “I guess it’s a big increase by percentage, it’s a fair number of kids, but the absolute numbers are fairly small.”

He also noted that a state average does not tell the entire story of vaccine hesitancy.

“It’s also misleading because the exemptions tend to cluster geographically, socially, and the state average can can’t capture that social, geographical cluster issues,” he said.

In the last school year, there were higher concentrations of religious exemptions in some of Maryland’s more rural counties. The highest rate of religious exemptions were in Worcester (4.21%) and Cecil (3.75%). But Baltimore City also ranked high for religious exemptions, at 2.05% of kindergartners.

Maryland tends to fall behind the national average of religious exemptions, according from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2022-2023, the national average for nonmedical exemption was 2.8% of kindergartners, compared to Maryland’s 1.4% for that year.

Salmon notes that there are many factors since the pandemic that have led to more parents seeking out exemptions from vaccination requirements.

“There’s not a simple answer. It’s a mixture of people not being aware of the diseases … people worried about the safety of vaccines, often full of misinformation and disinformation,” he said. “We need to do a better job of communicating to parents more broadly, listen to people’s concerns and be empathetic and address them with the best available science.”

Elliott added that there are other underlying reasons why some families seek a religious waiver.

“What I often see now is families signing the religious objection because it’s too difficult to get to their children their vaccines … It’s not surprising to hear, ‘Well, I just couldn’t get to the clinic.’ So they just signed the religious waiver,” she said, noting that this issue gets more common in middle school.

Elliott agreed with Salmon that the best way to reach families who are hesitant about vaccinating their kids is to be is to be understanding and respectful. She said that as a school nurse, it is part of her responsibility to help families understand why vaccines are important for health and safety in a school setting.

“We are the ones that will view the records and ensure compliance and reach out to families,” she said. “It is a state requirement that students are immunized. And we spend lots and lots and lots of time picking up the phone and having those conversations, politely and respectfully, informing those parents.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on and .

OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters issued guidelines Wednesday for how teachers should include the Bible in public school curriculum that include requiring analysis of biblical stories and art.

And amid a growing swell of pushback from districts, he warned there would be consequences for school districts that don’t comply.

Grade-level specific guidelines apply to students in fifth through 12th grades. They require students to analyze literary elements of biblical stories and to identify how those have impacted Western culture. For high school students, it entails assigned essays on the Bible’s role in literature, history and culture. Pieces of art and music inspired by the Bible are also required to be taught.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Every classroom must also have a physical copy of the Bible, the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Ten Commandments.

“The Bible is indispensable in understanding the development of Western civilization and American history,” Walters said in a statement. “To ensure our students are equipped to understand and contextualize our nation, its culture, and its founding, every student in Oklahoma will be taught the Bible in its historical, cultural, and literary context. As we implement these standards, our schools will maintain open communication with parents to make sure they are fully informed and full partners in their kids’ education.”

Walters the inclusion of the Bible in state curriculum during a June State Board of Education meeting, but Wednesday was the first time his agency announced specific guidelines regarding their inclusion.

In the weeks since Walters’ announcement, some of the state’s have said they will not comply.

Following the announcement, Rick Cobb, superintendent of Midwest City-Del City Public Schools, said in a statement that it is not appropriate to mandate the Bible to be in classrooms or instruction.

“The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled this summer that selection of instructional materials is a matter of local control,” Cobb said. “I hope that remains the law and continues to be our practice.”

Walters said he will ensure all districts comply.

“Some Oklahoma educators have indicated they won’t follow the law and Oklahoma standards, so let me be clear: they will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it,” he said.

Mixed reaction and questions about legality

The new guidelines drew mixed reactions.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of state-church watchdog group Freedom From Religion Foundation, said the guidelines are unconstitutional.

“It’s just absurd,” Gaylor said. “And he’s just signaling as fast as he can, as loud as he can, that he expects schools to brainwash children in the Christian religion.”

While the group is working with a coalition of other organizations to determine a plan of action, Gaylor said they are taking time to digest the material.

Gaylor said it would be appropriate for a properly trained teacher to offer an optional class to high school students on the Bible.

“But what he’s saying is every single teacher is to be given a Bible, and that’s just simply unconstitutional,” Gaylor said. “What about giving every teacher the Quran? What about giving every teacher Richard Dawkins’ blockbuster book, ‘The God Delusion’?”

Chuck Stetson, CEO of the NewYork-based Bible Literacy Project, said he commends the guidelines and wishes they would be implemented in every public school nationwide.

“This is educational instructions [to] the public schools, and it’s perfectly legal, and it’s what kids need to know,” Stetson said.

The organization provides textbooks on the Bible’s literature and influence. Stetson said the guidelines have similarities to the organization’s textbooks.

Not including the Bible in public schools disadvantages students, he said.

“For example, in Shakespeare, there are over 1,200 biblical references in the 38 plays of Shakespeare,” Stetson said. “My contention is that if you don’t know the Bible, you can’t possibly know Shakespeare and what he’s talking about.”

Stetson said the Bible is the “most-read literary book in the world,” and students miss out on literary and historical context when the Bible is not taught.

However, Stetson said he was unsure how the additions to curriculum could be implemented in lower grade levels.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .