Oklahoma Supreme Court Blocks Proposed Social Studies Standards

The Oklahoma Supreme Court issued a temporary hold on proposed social studies standards for K-12 public schools, Monday, Sept. 15, amid a pending lawsuit challenging the standards’ constitutionality. 

The Court ruled in a 5-2 decision that Oklahoma public schools must revert to the previous social studies standards approved in 2019 until a conclusion regarding the proposed standard’s constitutionality has been reached. 

Academic standards specify a list of topics that public school students should be expected to understand by the end of each grade level. 

Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters proposed that the 2025-26 standards for social studies classes would include the teaching of “discrepancies” in the 2020 presidential election, including “sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.” 

Additionally, Walters ordered that Oklahoma public schools should incorporate the Bible into lessons for grades five through twelve. 

These standards were initially approved by the Oklahoma State Board of Education (OSBE) on Feb. 27, 2025, with some members of the Board alleging that the new proposals were approved without their knowledge and were done in violation of the Oklahoma Open Meetings Act. 

In response, on July 1, 2025, a group of 33 Oklahoma parents, teachers and faith leaders filed a lawsuit to the Oklahoma Supreme Court stating that these new social studies standards would unconstitutionally present a “distorted view of social studies that intentionally favors an outdated and blatantly biased perspective,” and that the OSBE failed to uphold state law when approving the standards.

“The 2025-2026 school year is well underway with the 2025 Standards in effect in school districts across the state,” Chief Justice Dustin Rowe wrote in the Court’s dissenting opinion. “To issue an injunction at this point — months after the alleged Open Meeting Act violation and after the 2025-2026 academic has commenced — would be contrary to our legal precedent and disruptive to school curriculum statewide.” The Open Meetings Act is the “public policy of the State of Oklahoma to encourage and facilitate an informed citizenry’s understanding of the governmental processes and governmental problems.”