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Four plaintiffs join suit anonymously out of fear of ‘personal injury’
Several northern California parents are suing the Palo Alto School Unified School District, alleging the high school of the same name took a field trip to a mosque last fall.
The plaintiffs allege students were “encouraged to wear Islamic religious attire,” given Qurans, and “exposed to messaging that portrayed Islam as uniquely aligned with social justice work,” The Washington Stand reports.
According to the lawsuit, Palo Alto High offers a “Social Justice Pathway” for students’ sophomore-senior years. The program has “periodically and repeatedly organized” field trips to a mosque at the Muslim Community Association – Bay Area.
“Plaintiffs allege that the District failed to maintain religious neutrality, failed to ensure equal treatment among faiths, failed to protect student privacy, and failed to vet, supervise, and monitor religiously divisive outside speakers during the school-sponsored event,” the lawsuit reads.
The plaintiffs further claim they “continue to be injured” by the district’s “endorsement of Islam in particular” as a force for social justice over other religions.
In addition, students allegedly “were exposed” to Zahra Billoo of the the San Francisco chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, who was “allowed unfettered access to students to advocate personal religious and political views without balancing perspective or adequate supervision.”
In 2024 Billoo vouched for an anti-Israel UC Berkeley law student who interrupted a private dinner hosted by her dean in order to proselytize about divestment from that country.
That same year, Billoo also claimed pro-Palestinian students arrested for breaking into and occupying the Stanford University president’s office had their free speech rights “attacked” and were victims of “repression.”
The Stand report notes no Christians are among the lawsuit’s plaintiffs; they appear to be mostly Jewish along with one Hindu and a Zoroastrian. The group “Plaintiff Community Members for Religious Neutrality in Public Schools – San Francisco Bay Area” also is listed as a plaintiff.
Four of the Jewish plaintiffs joined the suit anonymously “out of fear that public identification would likely lead to legally recognizable forms of personal injury.”
Among other relief, the lawsuit seeks a “declaration” that the Palo Alto district’s “acts, policies, customs, and practices” were violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Sections 1, 2(a), 4, and 7 of the California Constitution.
MORE: Christian university to send students to mosque for ‘religious experience’
