Lawmakers to consider required Bible readings in schools

BOISE — The House Education Committee introduced a bill Thursday to require Bible reading in all public schools.

Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, sponsored the bill, but it was largely presented to the committee by the Christian-centered Idaho Family Policy Center’s president, Blaine Conzatti.

The bill would create a new section of code called “school-sponsored Bible reading” that would require passages of the King James or new King James version of the Bible be read each morning in occupied classrooms in all public school districts. The reading would be “without comment or interpretation,” according to the bill.

School districts would be required to organize the daily selections so that the entire Bible would be read sequentially over 10 years.

Any teacher unwilling to do the reading, on religious or conscience-based grounds, could opt out, and the passage would be read by another person each morning. A student with a written request from their parent or guardian would be able to be exempted from the daily readings.

Conzatti said that because Idaho has a historical precedent for reading the Bible in school, he thought it would be deemed constitutional and would not then require the reading of any other religious text.

“State legislatures have the primary authority for shaping school curriculum and education standards, and there is no need to give equal time to every competing religious historical or literary text,” Conzatti said.

Rep. Jack Nelsen, R-Jerome, said he would vote to introduce the bill so it could come back for a public hearing, but he had a “contrary view” from Conzatti.

“This country was settled by people that weren’t moving to religion, they were moving away from state-mandated religion,” Nelsen said. “To me, this picks a particular religion’s Bible, and I am not for advancing this.”

Constitutional questions, evolving case law

Past court decisions have ruled that requiring Bible reading in schools is unconstitutional, but Conzatti argued that more recent precedent would indicate the current courts would uphold such a law.

Idaho in 1925 enacted a law that required all schools to read daily passages from the Bible without comment or interpretation, the session records from the time show. Records also show another law was passed in 1963 to implement the same requirement, but this law was struck down that same year.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1963 Abington School District v. Schempp that state-sponsored Bible readings violated the First Amendment and what’s known as the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment — which prevents the government from establishing a religion.

That case applied a view of the Constitution known as the “wall of separation” between the church and the state, University of Idaho law professor Richard Seamon told the Idaho Press. Seamon specializes in constitutional law.

The view, more common during the court rulings of the 1960s and ’70s, was that there should be a “very firm and impermeable wall between government and religion,” Seamon said.

“That view has really changed,” Seamon said.

Conzatti noted that the 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton School District case, which ruled in favor of a coach who had been leading his players in prayer, took a very different view of how these cases should be evaluated. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion that instead of the wall of separation, the court should apply a test more based on “reference to historical practices and understandings.”

Conzatti’s argument was that because of that 1925 law, the Bible could be required but not other religious texts, which have not been historically required in schools.

The 2022 decision created this new test based on historical practices and understandings, but legal experts have noted that Gorsuch did not further explain in the opinion how the test applied in the new standard.

“I think it’s very unclear how it would be applied to this situation,” Seamon said of the new standard, “because of course public schools themselves certainly didn’t exist when the Establishment Clause was first adopted in 1791.”

Those who support these laws would argue that the nation was founded under Judeo-Christian values, which would justify singling out the Bible, he said. However, Seamon said, others might argue that it would be more constitutional to allow readings from various traditions and the state shouldn’t show favor to just one religion or tradition.

“I can’t really predict how the court would come out,” he said.

Rep. Chris Mathias, D-Boise, on Thursday said of the “history and tradition test” that was mentioned, “I can’t speak for all Black people, but ‘history and tradition’ tests just really make me nervous.”

In addition to the Bible-reading law, the Idaho Legislature in 1925 also created a now-defunct “Board of Eugenics,” which had the authority to decide if people determined to be “feeble-minded, insane, epileptic, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sexual perverts,” should be sterilized. Sterilizations in Idaho continued until 1963, according to a report published by the University of Vermont.

The bill on Bible reading, if passed, is likely to see legal challenges.

The ACLU of Idaho has not yet said it will pursue legal action, but said in a statement to the Idaho Press it opposes the concept.

“The ACLU of Idaho opposes any form of religious indoctrination in public schools, including Bible reading and organized prayers, as they violate the principle of separation of church and state established in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” ACLU of Idaho spokesperson Rebecca De León said in an email. “Public schools may teach about religion in an educational context but must avoid promoting religious views or doctrines.”

The Oklahoma Supreme Court is currently considering a law enacted there that requires schools to incorporate the Bible and Ten Commandments in its curriculum.

It’s also unclear how the bill would interact with Idaho’s Constitution which prohibits “sectarian or religious tenets or doctrines” from being taught in public schools. It also prohibits “books, papers, tracts or documents of a political, sectarian or denominational character” from being used or introduced.

A 2015 legal opinion from the office of the-Attorney General Lawerence Wasden, found the a proposed bill to permit the use of the Bible as reference for instruction “almost certainly unconstitutional” under the Idaho Constitution.

Then-Assistant Chief Deputy Brian Kane wrote that the bill language proposed at the time was “virtually impossible to defend because it selects a specific religious text to be used as reference over any other religious texts.”

“This selection of text can be interpreted as an establishment of one religious preference over another, which creates an insurmountable constitutional hurdle,” Kane wrote.

The office of current Attorney General Raúl Labrador responded to a request for comment that the office does not speak on pending legislation.

Seamon said given that the prior framework for overturning past Bible-reading laws has largely been thrown out, it’s a “credible argument” that the courts should revisit the question.

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on Twitter @EyeOnBoiseGuido.