ACLJ Takes Legal Action After Christian Girl Told “No Choice” But To Violate Her Faith

We previously informed you about how a Washington school district told a Christian middle schooler, J.H., that she had “no choice” but to sit through an “Inclusion Assembly” that violated her faith – which was the school’s third violation of our client’s religious liberty. Now we’ve asked the court to put an end to it while our case moves forward.

Last week, the ACLJ filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in our client’s case against Highline Public Schools. The ask is simple: Restore the notice-and-opt-out protection the school district unilaterally abandoned, and make it clear to every teacher and administrator at Sylvester Middle School that a student’s religious objection must not be ignored.

The law here is clear: Parents, not schools, have the right to direct their child’s faith. One year ago, in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court held that public schools substantially burden parents’ free exercise rights when they compel children to sit through instruction that poses “a very real threat of undermining” the religious beliefs their parents are raising them to hold. When that happens, the Constitution requires advance notice and a genuine opt-out – and the Court ordered exactly the kind of relief we’re now asking this court to enter.

If anything, this case presents a worse violation of religious liberty than Mahmoud. The school board in Mahmoud never gave parents an opt-out. Here, Highline gave our clients an opt-out for years, and then suddenly revoked that right without warning right before an “Inclusion Assembly” that contained slides telling students that dissent “will not be allowed.”

And unlike in Mahmoud, J.H. didn’t just lack a policy protecting her. She spoke up in the moment, told two staff members directly, while in tears, that the content conflicted with her Christian faith, and was told point-blank she had “no choice” but to return and sit through it – while the very administrator who’d confronted her over her faith months earlier watched from the back of the room.

The motion also makes clear that this case is about more than a parent’s right to notice and an opt-out. J.H. has her own First Amendment rights. She has a right to share her faith with willing classmates during non-instructional time on the same terms as students who share secular views, and she has a right not to be singled out because her viewpoint is religious.

Highline’s conduct violated both principles: It told J.H. that students may share “opinions” but not religious beliefs, allowed comparable secular advocacy, then later compelled her to remain in school-sponsored moral instruction after she expressly invoked her Christian objection. The injunction we are seeking would protect not only Jonathan H.’s (our client’s father) authority as a parent, but also J.H.’s own right to live out and express her faith at school without discrimination.

The Free Exercise Clause forbids such coercion by school officials. Parents do not surrender their constitutional rights the moment they enroll their children in public school, and no student should be told her faith doesn’t count the moment she has the courage to voice it.

Take action with us and defend our clients’ religious liberty: Defeat the Left’s War Against Christians.