Parents ask Supreme Court to hear case on Calif. religious education ban
A group of parents have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case aimed at ending a California charter school policy banning the inclusion of religious materials in homeschool study programs.
The First Liberty Institute, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and King & Spalding LLP filed a petition last week on behalf of three families — John and Breanna Woolard, Hector and Diana Gonzales, and Carrie Dodson — in the case of John Woolard, et al. v. Tony Thurmond et al.
At issue was whether a California policy can allow charter schools to deny parents funding and academic credit for educational materials that are considered religious in nature.
“The charter schools overseeing petitioners’ independent-study programs rejected the use of works by William Penn and Jonathan Edwards because of their ‘religious content,’” the petition alleged.
The families had also sought to use materials including Bob Jones University's "Focus on Fives" and "The Good and the Beautiful," both designed to integrate religious teaching into academic subjects, according to ReligiousLiberty.TV.
“They rejected a grammar exercise using the sentence ‘God sends the rain to help plants grow’ because the school ‘can’t accept any work sample with any religious wording on it.’”
First Liberty Institute Executive General Counsel Hiram Sasser said in a statement last week that previous decisions in the litigation had wrongfully justified “the state’s religious discrimination.”
“Parents should not be punished for choosing quality religious curriculum meeting the state’s standard that they teach to their own children in their own home just because it’s religious,” he added.
Article 9, Section 8 of the California state constitution reads that “No public money shall ever be appropriated for the support of any sectarian [religious] or denominational school, or any school not under the exclusive control of the officers of the public schools; nor shall any sectarian or denominational doctrine be taught, or instruction thereon be permitted, directly or indirectly, in any of the common schools of this State.”
The schools also cited California Education Code § 47605(e)(1), which requires that "a charter school shall be nonsectarian in its programs."
Given that charter schools in California are part of the public school system, the ban on public funding of religious instruction that is considered sectarian in nature is part of their directives.
In October 2023, parents whose children took part in the independent study programs of Blue Ridge Academy and Visions in Education charter schools sued California over the policy.
The complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, argued that the parents should be allowed to include Christian instruction in their study program.
Defendants named in the suit included Tony Thurmond, superintendent of Public Instruction; Michael Coleman, superintendent of Maricopa Unified School District; board members of the Maricopa USD; Melissa Bassanelli, superintendent of San Juan Unified School District; board members of the San Juan USD; officials at Blue Ridge Academy and officials at Visions in Education.
Last September, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit — composed of Judges Andrew D. Hurwitz, Eric Miller and Jennifer Sung — unanimously ruled against the parents, upholding an earlier district court decision.
The panel's opinion cited the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Carson v. Makin, which held that the Free Exercise Clause does not prohibit a state from providing "a strictly secular education in its public schools," while the parents argued their case was distinguishable because the independent study programs functioned, in substance, as private homeschooling rather than public education.
Ninth Circuit Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz, an Obama appointee, authored the panel opinion, noting that “not all government decisions that engender religious objections impose burdens on religion that fall afoul of the Free Exercise Clause.”
“Plaintiffs have alleged, and we take as true, that the defendant charter schools provide parents great flexibility to choose which pre-existing curricula to use to educate their children, or to create their own,” wrote Hurwitz.
“But with that flexibility comes substantial legal constraints not applicable to private schools. … The extensive legal requirements applicable to the defendant charter schools’ independent study programs make the programs sufficiently public to defeat Plaintiffs’ free exercise claim.”
Following the panel's ruling, the families petitioned the full Ninth Circuit for an en banc rehearing. "We are hopeful that the full Court will grant rehearing and come to the right decision, restoring protection for bedrock First Amendment principles," said Alexander Kazam, co-counsel at King & Spalding, according to the California Family Council. That request did not succeed, leading the families to petition the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to resume its closed-door conferences to consider which cases to hear beginning Sept. 28, with its new term opening Oct. 5. A decision on whether the justices will take up Woolard v. Thurmond could come as soon as this fall, according to The Washington Examiner.
