School Religion Lawsuit Continues In Chatham

CHATHAM, NJ — After a sudden return to federal court, a lawsuit brought by a parent who claimed that the School District of the Chathams had used its curriculum to promote Islam is once again being looked at.

A federal judge first dismissed the lawsuit in 2020, which protested the Islamic curriculum in the Chatham school district.

However, this summer, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned that decision and remanded the case for further consideration in light of a recent Supreme Court Case, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.

In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the justices ruled that a high school football coach should not be punished for praying at the 50-yard line after games. That ruling questioned the Lemon Test, a method of analysis used to determine whether an establishment has violated the First Amendment.

The Chatham case was then remanded to the court that granted the summary judgment so that it could be further examined after the Supreme Court substituted a new test.

According to the defense attorney for the School District of the Chathams, the Constitution does not provide citizens with an absolute right to avoid ideas with which they disagree.

To find an Establishment Clause violation within a school district, the evidence must now show that a student was coerced in a real and direct way to participate in a religious practice or prayer, not just a phantom one.

"The Third Circuit agrees that the Establishment Clause’s coercion test does not, in the school context, prevent mere exposure to ideas or beliefs that simply do not comport with a student’s religious belief," the brief said.

In the lawsuit, Chatham parent Libby Hilsenrath claimed that her son was required to view materials and complete assignments in his World Cultures and Geography class that contained religious teachings about Islam — presented as "facts" rather than beliefs — during the 2016-17 school year.

According to the brief, during the Middle East and North Africa unit of the 7th grade World Cultures and Geography class, Ms. Jakowski, the named teacher, did not show the videos named in the lawsuit, instead only posting them on Google Classroom for the students to reference.

In fact, the only evidence Hilsenrath submitted to show that the videos were required viewing at home was a "study guide" created for her class by another 7th-grade social studies teacher who was not named as a defendant in the case, according to the brief.

"This type of instruction that requires students to merely 'read, discuss and think' about a religion does not violate the Establishment Clause because no student would understand that they were being pressured to follow Islam or to adopt the views of Islam as their own by simply learning to identify the views of a particular religion," the attorneys said.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the lawsuit had been dismissed when it has not. All statements in the article were made by the defense attorney for the School District of the Chathams.