Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, refiled a bill that would require all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)
OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma lawmaker says he hopes new House leadership will support a better outcome for his resurrected bill to display the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, has refiled the bill after it failed last year. House Bill 1006 would require a poster or a framed copy of the Ten Commandments to be posted in a conspicuous place in every public school classroom in Oklahoma, a state where the head of public schools also is endeavoring to put Biblical texts in classrooms.
“The Ten Commandments is one of our founding documents,” Olsen said. “It was integral and central to the life of the founders and to our people in general during the founding of the nation, and for us to give our children an honest history of how things really were, I think that needs to be included.”
Louisiana passed a similar law requiring school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. Enforcement of the law is blocked in five Louisiana school districts after a federal judge deemed it unconstitutional and overtly religious.
In 2015, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered the removal of a statue of the Ten Commandments from the state Capitol, finding it a violation of the state Constitution. A year later, Oklahoma voters upheld the state Constitution’s prohibition against spending public funds for religious purposes.
Despite the Louisiana ruling and past decisions in Oklahoma, Olsen said he believes his bill has a viable legal future in light of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
The Court in 2022 ruled in favor of a high school football coach praying with players at games. In doing so, the Court abandoned its long-standing Lemon test, which it had used to measure compliance with the First Amendment and church-state separation.
Olsen’s bill will have to gain significantly more traction than it did last year for it to become law in Oklahoma.
His previous bill died early in the 2024 legislative session after it failed to get an initial hearing in a House committee on education appropriations. The panel’s chairperson who declined to hear the bill, Rep. Mark McBride, R-Moore, is one of several leading House Republicans who are no longer in office because of term limits.
Olsen said he is “cautiously optimistic” that new House leaders will be supportive.
McBride’s successor at the head of the education appropriations committee, Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, said it would be premature to comment on whether he would give the bill a hearing. He said he hasn’t read the legislation nor has it been assigned yet to a committee for review.
Oklahoma’s top education official, state Superintendent Ryan Walters, advocated for the legislation last year. Walters called the Ten Commandments a “founding document of our country” and an “important historical precedent.”
Since then, Walters ordered public schools to keep a copy of the Bible in every classroom and incorporate the Christian text into lesson plans. Several district leaders have said they won’t comply, and a lawsuit is challenging the order.
Walters’ administration spent just under $25,000 to buy over 500 copies of Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA Bible, which the state superintendent said he would place in AP government classrooms. He also proposed new standards for social studies education that include 40 references to the Bible.
“The breakdown in classroom discipline over the past 40 years is in no small measure due to the elimination of the Ten Commandments as guideposts for student behavior,” Walters said about Olsen’s bill last year. “I will continue to fight against state-sponsored atheism that has caused society to go downhill.”
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