CAS Legal Mailbag ' 11/3/22

Published date07 November 2022
Subject MatterConsumer Protection, Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration, Education, Trials & Appeals & Compensation
Law FirmShipman & Goodwin LLP
AuthorMr Thomas B. Mooney

Dear Legal Mailbag:

Yesterday, I received a form letter from a parent, in which she attested to her religious convictions, stated that she has the right to raise her child in accordance with Biblical values, and expressed concern over what her child may be exposed to at school. Parents are certainly entitled to their opinions, and that is all fine with me. But then she went on:

Accordingly, I have the right to have my child excluded from any and all such activities, events, programs and reading material not in accordance with our beliefs or values, without penalty. This exclusion applies throughout the time my child attends public school and should be maintained in his permanent file.

As a parent/caregiver, the expectation is for my child to be excluded from:

1. Any instruction, emphasis, teaching, video presentation, literature or activity that acknowledges and/or accepts the family institution as other than one reflecting God's creation as male and female. This includes topics of gender other than reflecting the gender at birth which are only two: male and female.

2. Same gender parents.

The list went on, but the first two demands threw me for a loop. We teach tolerance at our school. We teach that love makes a family, and our curriculum includes depictions of different types of families. I certainly respect the right of parents to hold their personal religious views and to raise their children in a manner consistent with those views. However, I cannot imagine how we could comply with this request. Do we have to?

Signed,
Seeking Guidance

Dear Seeking:

You do not.

Public schools have an affirmative duty to accommodate the religious practices of parents and students. A student should not suffer a disadvantage, for example, for missing school or a school activity to celebrate a religious holiday. But that duty does not extend to the request this parent is making. Exposure of students to ideas and practices with which parents may disagree is part of school life, and the courts have rejected claims that such exposure somehow violates the religious rights of parents or their children. Rather, school officials have the right to establish the curriculum, and parents are free either to send their children to the public schools to receive that curriculum or 'to show that the child is elsewhere receiving equivalent instruction in the studies taught in the public schools' as required by Conn. Gen. Stat. ' 10-184(a). Parents may make that showing by enrolling their...

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