Oklahoma’s new academic standards for social studies education won’t be used after all; they were struck down by the Oklahoma Supreme Court Tuesday.
Outlined in a slim, 5-4 decision, the state’s high court said the State Board of Education violated the Open Meeting Act because it didn’t provide proper notice about the proposed changes to the standards.
Writing for the majority, Justice James Edmondson – the brother of former Attorney General Drew Edmondson – said the notice of the agenda for the 2025 standards violated the Open Meeting Act, “when the public body used the agenda items in the notice for the purpose of adopting fundamentally different substantive standards not placed on the notice of the agenda.”
The board’s notice of the agenda was not sufficient to apprise the public of the substantive standards being considered for adoption, Edmondson wrote, adding “the 2025 Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies shall not be enforced.”
Under the court’s ruling, the 2019 Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies remain in effect until the state education board “properly creates new Oklahoma academic standards for social studies” with subsequent legislative approval.
However, one of the four justices who dissented wrote that the state’s Open Meeting Act was “one of the most consequential statutory enactments” the state had adopted, and to determine whether a public body has violated that act involves a fact-intensive inquiry – a responsibility vested with a trial court.
“I have previously emphasized that compliance with the Act is a legal question ‘where the trial court must ascertain findings of fact.” Justice Dustin Rowe wrote in his dissent. “I further noted, “[t]he Supreme Court does not conduct trials--nor are we situated to make findings of fact. Without the ability to fully litigate the alleged violations in a trial or hearing, the Open Meeting Act is gutted.”
Rowe’s dissent continued, saying, “determining whether a willful violation has occurred demands a complete factual record--a record which we do not have with an application to assume original jurisdiction.”
By assuming original jurisdiction, to address petitioners’ claim that respondents violated the act, Rowe wrote, “the Majority has stripped the parties’ right to develop a complete factual record and litigate whether Respondents violated the Act.
“I would decline to assume original jurisdiction, as the more appropriate course is for the parties to develop a complete factual record and litigate the alleged Act violations and whether they were willful in the trial court,” he wrote.
Why were the standards so controversial?
Pushed by then-State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters in 2024 and voted on by the State Board of Education in February, the new academic standards for social studies included a requirement that students learn about ‘discrepancies’ in the 2020 presidential election.
In addition, the standards required public school students to:
•Explain the effects of the Trump tax cuts, child tax credit, border enforcement efforts including ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, consumer and business confidence, interest rates, and inflation rates prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
•Describe the effects of the replacement of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), expanded European contributions to NATO spending, the signing of the Abraham Accords, a series of U.S.-brokered agreements that say, starting in 2020 there will be established full diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab nations (United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan). The agreements were named after the shared patriarch of Judaism and Islam.
•Identify the source of the COVID-19 pandemic being from a Chinese lab and the economic and social effects of state and local lockdowns.
•Analyze the impact of appointments to the U.S. judicial system and the Supreme Court (e.g., Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the overturning of Roe v. Wade).
•Identify discrepancies in the 2020 election results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of “bellwether county” trends.
Walters, in a media statement about the standards issued this spring, said they were “among the strongest in the country: pro-America, pro-American exceptionalism, and strengthen civics and constitutional studies across every grade.”
“Oklahoma is putting the Bible and the historical impact of Christianity back in school,” he said. “We are demanding that our children learn the full and true context of our nation’s founding and of the principles that made and continue to make America great and exceptional. I am proud that Oklahoma is taking the lead in putting President Trump’s education agenda into practice. We are presenting a successful model that others can emulate for how to restore public education and eradicate radical woke influences from our schools.”
Walters, however, could not be reached for comment about the high court’s ruling.
Opponents questioned the need for changes to social studies standards. Former state Rep.
Mark McBride, a Republican from Moore, said he believed the standards would eventually be challenged and that it would take a court decision to resolve the issue.
“Honestly I thought it would eventually come down to this,” McBride said. “I want to commend the Supreme Court for the decision it made. I think it was the only decision that could be made.”
McBride said the way the standards were address and voted on was wrong. He said the Legislature acquiesced on the standards and didn’t question the way they were adopted by the state board.
With the court’s ruling, Oklahoma’s social studies standards will revert to the previous version. Any future changes would require action by the State Board of Education and the Oklahoma Legislature.