A group of parents and faith leaders in Oklahoma is suing to stop new academic standards from taking effect due to concerns that they “coercively subject” public school students to Christian teachings.

The new standards, set to go into effect when the school year begins in August, require elementary students to learn about how stories from the Bible and Jesus’s teachings “influenced the American colonists, founders, and culture.” Meanwhile, students in fifth through eighth grade would have to learn about the Judeo-Christian values that influenced America’s Founders.

While the state superintendent, Ryan Walters, insists that the standards are crucial to ensuring students understand American history, the lawsuit says the standards are unconstitutional because they impose Christian beliefs on public school students.

The groups are represented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. Some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed this week have also sued to block Mr. Walters’s mandate that public classrooms have Bibles in them, a case pending before the state’s supreme court. 

The majority of the plaintiffs in the case say they were not raising their children in the Christian faith, or of any faith.

“The 2025 Standards’ promotion and favoritism of Christianity will coerceivly subject them to religious teachings that are contrary to their own beliefs, cause them to feel different and inferior, trigger discussions of religion in school that will lead them to feel ostracized and marginalized, impair their relationships with their teachers, and harm their ability to engage and succeed in the classroom,” the lawsuit alleges. 

The lead plaintiff in the case is a Baptist minister, Mitch Randal, who took issue with the standards, saying, “To reduce the Bible to a history book — rather than treating it as a theological text — does a disservice to public school students, their families, their teachers and those who consider the Bible to be a book of faith.”

In a statement, Mr. Walters called the lawsuit “despicable.”

“It is despicable, yet predictable, that those behind this lawsuit would use Independence Day week to attack our Academy Standards. The Left continues their attempts to destroy Christianity, our history, and America herself,” Mr. Walters said. “Our students will know Americans never have, and never will, bow to their tyrannical hatred of liberty and American values.”

The standards have been the source of multiple lawsuits. Last month, a judge dismissed a lawsuit that argued that the standards were not properly approved by the state.