1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

The State Board of Education's new K-12 reading mandate is unconstitutional and needs to be challenged before it takes effect in 2030. Requiring more than 5 million public school students to read specific Bible passages — including the King James Version, a translation not even used by all Christians — is not a literary enrichment program. It's state-sponsored religious instruction. About a third of Texas adults identify as non-Christian. Their children deserve a public education that doesn't treat their families' beliefs as an afterthought. Even board member Evelyn Brooks, a Republican, called this move "unconstitutional." When the board mandates specific denominational texts and eliminates the sixth-grade World Cultures course in the same meeting, the message to non-Christian and non-Protestant students is clear: you don't belong here. Teachers are also being put in an impossible position, required to instruct religious content they may be unfamiliar with or personally opposed to. Please use every legislative tool available to block or reverse this curriculum before it reaches a single classroom. This isn't about whether the Bible has literary value — it's about who gets to decide what religion, if any, shapes a child's education. That decision belongs to parents, not the state.