We have used photoemission spectroscopy to examine the symmetry of the occupied states of the valence band for the La doped superconductor Bi2(Ca, Sr, La)3Cu2O8. While the oxygen states near the bottom of the 7 eV wide valence band exhibit predominantly O 2pzsymmetry, the states at the top of the valence band extending to the Fermi level are found to have primarily O 2pxand O 2pycharacter. We have also examined anomalous intensity enhancements in the valence band feature for photon energies near 18 eV. These enhancements, which occur at photon energies ranging from 15.8 to 18.0 eV for the different valence band features, are not consistent with either simple final state effects or direct O2s transitions to unoccupied O2p states.