In a dramatic win for religious liberty, Chicago Public Schools have been ordered to pay out over $2.6 million to high school students in a class action religious freedom case.
Former public school students in Chicago were required to participate in a Transcendental Meditation™ program during class. There was no opt-out and no parental permission required.
“As part of their in-school curriculum,” attorney John Mauck, partner at Mauck & Baker, explained, “the students were either required to participate in Transcendental Meditation or were deprived daily of a half hour of academic opportunity and made to maintain silence while their classmates focused their minds on secret mantras.”
The TM sessions were put in place by the Chicago Board of Education and the New York-based David Lynch Foundation, which aims to, “ensure that every child anywhere in the world who wanted to learn to meditate could do so. Now the Foundation is actively teaching TM to adults and children in countries everywhere.”
Kaya Hughes, now 22, recalls how she was made to take part in the program called “Quiet Time” at 16 years old. Her involvement was mandated regardless of any objections she may have had. She shared how despite its innocuous title, the mandatory sessions included an uncomfortably private one-on-one Hindu “Puja” worship ceremony in a darkened room, chanting, religious paraphernalia, and secret mantras which were actually the names of Hindu gods. The students were given mantras to mentally recite twice daily for 15 minutes.
In emails with the writer, Mauck added that over the four year duration of this required class, students complained among themselves and to their teachers. One group of students united their class in opposition—they boycotted the program—and their teacher reported that resistance to the principal. One student reported that she felt she had to go to Confession after doing the Meditation.
Another student, Mariyah Green, was told to kneel in front of the illuminated picture of Guru Dev or jeopardize her eligibility for basketball! She refused and told her mother. Her mother told their pastor, who wrote to the school principal in protest. Student Amonte Williams complained, and his father, a Baptist deacon, wrote a letter of protest to the Board of Education.
In spite of complaints, the TM requirement continued, without so much as adding parental approval. “This was done in an illegal effort to force a religious belief system upon them against their will. In many cases, the students were coerced to practice a worldview that was in conflict with their own faith,” added Mauck.
Eventually a supportive substitute teacher organized a parental protest that led to a hearing with the Board of Ed. There, four students spoke of their discomfort and objections to the TM program. The Board stated that they had received numerous letters of complaint from parents as well. In response the Board referred the issue to their counsel, who told the David Lynch Foundation it must stop the, “PUJA initiation” (TM program). The foundation refused. The program was then completely canceled for the 2019 school year.
Kaya Hughes became the lead plaintiff in a case for damages against both the Chicago Board of Education and the David lynch Foundation.
Mauck noted that, “Hudgins’ rights, and those of the other students were completely disregarded by the Chicago Board of Education.”
In May 2025, Judge Matthew Kennelly of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved the class action suit settlement, in which the Chicago Board of Education and the David Lynch Foundation are required to pay $2.6 million dollars to 207 former high school students, including Kaya Hudgins.
This case illustrates what Mauck labels “an egregious trend” by public schools and education authorities to force political agendas on students with neither their consent nor that of their parents.
Mauck referred to the recent United States Supreme Court Mahmoud v. Taylor decision as evidence.
“In Mahmoud v. Taylor, a school district was refusing to let parents opt their children out of lessons incorporating LGBTQ+ themes and literature,” Mauck detailed, “The high court ruled that the school district was out of line to deny parents their First Amendment religious rights.”
“In the case of Kaya and her peers,” added Mauck, “the schools had students sign nondisclosure agreements. Students shared how they and their classmates were instructed not to tell anyone, including their parents, about the program – detailing how they were particularly warned by a David Lynch Foundation representative not to tell their parents if their family was ‘religious.’”
“School administrators cannot run roughshod over Constitutionally guaranteed rights in order to force acceptance of ideologies that are in perceived conflict with the religious beliefs of parents and students. The teaching of Simian ancestry (humans are descended from apes) will be the next fallacy to be challenged in the public schools.”
Mauck concluded, “We hope that the Chicago Board of Education has learned that indoctrination doesn’t pay – unless you’re the victim. And there are multiple victims here – not just the students whose religious rights were violated, but parents who were deliberately deceived, teachers whose integrity was put on the line, and the communities which were negatively impacted by school overreach. The tide is turning. If schools continue this type of behavior, there will be more consequences, including financial. We hope this settlement will deter those who exploit young people, and that it will encourage school administrations to be wary of harming students by allowing wolves to prey on the sheep they are obligated to protect.”
Transcendental Meditation is explained by Catholic Answers as an, “eastern (Hindu) meditation technique that involves repeating a mantra (usually a Sanskrit sound) designed to bring the practitioner into a “higher form of consciousness” for the purpose of finding God within himself. This technique conflicts with authentic Christian prayer, whose goal is not to seek God in self but to flee self to the “You” of God.”
A dramatic win indeed!
Image: Ed Uthman, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr, unaltered.