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Ninth Circuit Rejects Bid for Public Funding of Religious Independent Study Curriculum
Opinion Says Judge Properly Dismissed Complaint Asserting Free Exercise Violation in Charter School Option That Pays for Parent-Selected Materials Only if Secular
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held yesterday that a trial judge properly dismissed a complaint asserting that public charter school programs providing state funds for the purchase of parent-selected curriculum run afoul of the First Amendment by limiting the payments to secular educational materials.
Rejecting the plaintiffs’ assertion that the restriction conflicts with recent high court jurisprudence clarifying that the state cannot exclude a potential recipient of a generally available public benefit based solely on that party’s religious views, the panel noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has confirmed that the Free Exercise Clause does not prohibit a state from providing strictly secular education.
As to the guardians’ assertion that the limitation violates their free speech rights by requiring them to use teaching materials that do not comport with their beliefs, the panel held that the curricula qualify as government expressions rather than compelled private discourse.
Challenging the dismissal were plaintiffs John and Breanna Woolard, Hector and Diana Gonzales, and Carrie Dodson. The Woolards, residents of Santa Fe Springs, and the Gonzales family, who live in Norwalk, each enrolled the children in their care with Blue Ridge Academy, a charter school offering independent study programming for kindergarten through 12th-grade students in Los Angeles, Ventura, and Kern Counties.
Dodson, who resides in Rancho Murieta, selected a similar program offered by Visions in Education, based in Sacramento County. Each of the charter schools provides funding for the purchase of curricula selected by the parents to allow for an individualized education plan.
Religious Educational Materials
The plaintiffs assert that the programs denied their requests in 2022 to pay for religious educational materials from Bob Jones University and The Good and the Beautiful, popular providers of Christian curricula for homeschool students.
On Oct. 11, 2023, they filed a complaint against California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, as well as various officials associated with the school districts that operate Blue Ridge and Visions, asserting constitutional claims under 42 U.S.C. §1983. In the complaint, they alleged:
“These schools tout their commitment to providing an individualized and inclusive learning experience that serves all families, and they make funds available to parents to choose a wide range of curricula and other educational products and enrichment activities.
“…But there is a glaring exception to this state-supported model of inclusive, individualized education. These schools discriminate against parents who seek to educate their children in accordance with their faith, even if that faith-based education fully satisfies state educational standards. In particular, these schools have restricted parents’ use of funds to purchase curricula and other instructional materials on the basis of religion and refused to accept or award credit for student work samples that derive from faith-based curricula or reflect religious perspectives.”
Motion to Dismiss
After the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), Senior District Court Judge John A. Mendez of the Eastern District of California granted the request, with prejudice, in June of last year. In the order, he wrote:
“Although a parent may be the curriculum decisionmaker in a private homeschool setting, Plaintiffs have elected to enroll their students in public homeschool programs….Neither charter school allows parents or guardians to be the unilateral decisionmaker of a student’s curriculum, regardless of whether the materials are secular. The teachers work with parents or guardians and students to develop personalized learning plans that align with state standards….Visions and Blue Ridge’s publicly funded independent study programs do not, and cannot under California law, provide a private choice of curriculum.”
Senior Circuit Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz authored yesterday’s opinion affirming the ensuing defense judgment. Circuit Judges Eric D. Miller and Jennifer Sung joined in the opinion.
Charter School System
Hurwitz provided an overview of “the legal structure of the…charter school system,” noting that they are independent of local school districts but are overseen by governing boards that ensure that they meet the same statewide standards as other California public schools.
He explained that the “[p]laintiffs nonetheless argue that the defendant charter schools’ independent study programs are really homeschooling and that the schools’ provision of curricular materials should be treated as a generally available public benefit in aid of homeschooling, access to which cannot be denied based on Plaintiffs’ religious beliefs.”
Acknowledging that their “argument is premised on three recent Supreme Court decisions holding that when a state creates a generally available public benefit, it cannot exclude a potential recipient from the benefit because of religious status or religious use,” he remarked that the jurisprudence has recognized that a state’s decision to provide strictly secular public education does not violate the Free Exercise Clause.
State Requirements
The jurist pointed out that the independent study programs are required to have state-certified teachers overseeing the students’ education, even if the parents are responsible for the day-to-day instruction, and opined:
“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….But in contrast to private homeschooling, parents in independent study programs can teach only under the supervision of state employees. The extensive legal requirements applicable to the defendant charter schools’ independent study programs make the programs sufficiently public to defeat Plaintiffs’ free exercise claim.”
Addressing the Free Speech claim, he said that “[g]overnment speech is ‘not subject to scrutiny under the Free Speech Clause,’ ” and pointed out that case law has established that a public school’s curriculum is an expression of the governing district’s policy.
Unpersuaded that the unique circumstances of an independent study program change the analysis, he opined:
“Blue Ridge and Visions, in refusing to permit the use of the requested curricular materials, determined the ‘content of the education’ they would provide and any resulting speech in instruction was theirs, not that of Plaintiffs.”
The case is Woolard v. Thurmond, 24-4291.
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