Texas tees up likely legal battle with biblical public school lessons

Texas has joined the states mixing the Bible with public school classrooms, setting up another potential legal showdown.

The Texas State Board of Education voted 8-7 on Friday to allow lessons about stories in the Bible in K-5 classes, encouraging those who want more Christianity in public schools.

Texas's neighbors to the North and East, Oklahoma and Louisiana, are already facing court challenges over their own biblical mandates, and the Lone Star State is likely to join them there, too.

“It's not unlikely that we're going to see a lawsuit in Texas, and we’ll start by making clear to superintendents across the state that it would be unconstitutional to implement this type of requirement,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is involved in lawsuits in Oklahoma and Louisiana.

The instruction allowed in Texas is from the state-created Bluebonnet Learning and includes lessons such as one about Jesus's Sermon on the Mount for kindergarteners or the parable of the prodigal son for first grade.

Schools in the Lone Star State are not required to adopt the curriculum but will receive an extra $60 per student in funding if they do so.

The State Board of Education heard hours of testimony, both for and against the measure, before the vote, with some saying the curriculum disproportionately focuses on Christianity and blurs the lines between church and state.

“Texas AFT [American Federation of Teachers] believes that not only do these materials violate the separation of church and state and the academic freedom of our classroom, but also the sanctity of the teaching profession. These prescriptive materials cannot meet all learners in all contexts, and teachers must be empowered to adapt to the needs of their students,” the group said in a statement.

Advocates for increased use of religion texts in schools say teaching about Christianity is part of understanding the history of the U.S.

"As part of understanding the Civil Rights movement or the Great Awakening, or, you know, perhaps international relations after 9/11, you're allowed to teach people about religious texts. These are texts that exist in the world, and they're influential, and you don't have to erase them," said Rick Garnett, director of Notre Dame Law School’s Program on Church, State & Society, who is part of a legal effort in Oklahoma to create the nation's first openly religious charter school.

If schools "were picking Christian texts because we want to engage in evangelization [...] That that would be discriminatory and problematic," Garnett acknowledged. But he said from a constitutional standpoint, as long as the teaching doesn't go into prophesizing, "the permissibility of this program" does not depend on how much one religion is spoken about over another.

Oklahoma, meanwhile, is defending a rule that requires both copies of the Bible in every public school classroom and lessons regarding the book with no opt-out given. And Louisiana has sought to mandate posters of the Ten Commandments in classes, though that requirement has been paused as the case works its way through the courts.

“What's happening here is the introduction of the idea of Bible lessons. Well, are we establishing religion, or are we just increasing access to information, right? So that's how you're seeing the question being changed,” said Matthew Patrick Shaw, an assistant professor of law at Vanderbilt University Law School and an assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt Peabody College.

“There is a pathway for this to be declared constitutional [...] that says we're just giving people information. We're not telling them what to believe. They're getting access to this,” Shaw added. “OK, this is part of what we're deciding is the curriculum we want people to be exposed to, and we're not exposing people to this curriculum because of its religious content, we're exposing because it is culturally relevant. You can imagine: This is the conversation they will have.”

Those fighting the increased presence of Christianity in taxpayer-funded schools say the battle isn't going anywhere, particularly in light of the incoming administration.

“This is also a moment where the election of Trump — the reelection of Trump — is giving oxygen to this movement,” Laser said.