The Minnesota Department of Education may fully adopt its proposed new social studies standards, a judge has ruled, including an ethnic studies component that has sparked intense debate over whether the department was overstepping its authority.

Chief Administrative Law Judge Jenny Starr's approval marks the final hurdle for the new standards before the Education Department implements them in Minnesota's K-12 schools, opening the door to implementation of the new standards in the fall of 2026.

Starr had asked department officials to amend the ethnic studies mandate, citing what another judge flagged as an "impermissibly vague" rule. The original draft of the standards included a requirement for teachers to "apply lessons from the past in order to eliminate historical and contemporary injustices."

The Education Department tweaked that passage to make the language more passive — the upshot being that teachers may ask their pupils to study history and suggest how society might improve, instead of requiring them to offer solutions.

"All defects identified in the prior order have been corrected," Starr wrote in her decision, published Thursday.

State law requires the Education Department to update academic standards once a decade in English, math, science, social studies, physical education and the arts. It assigned a committee to draft revisions to the social studies standards in 2021.

The proposed update drew several critics when it was first unveiled in 2022. Opponents, including several Republicans, argued the Education Department was barred from adding an ethnic studies component because state law only mentioned citizenship and government, geography, history and economics as part of the social studies curriculum. They also said department officials didn't do their due diligence in drafting the standards, and criticized the lack of business leaders on the drafting committee.

Administrative Law Judge Eric Lipman disagreed with those criticisms, pointing to new state laws requiring schools to offer ethnic studies classes and courses on genocide and Native American history as proof the Legislature intended the Department of Education to weave those lessons into curriculum.