The Illinois Circuit Court has made a significant decision last week that champions the right of students to adhere to their own religious beliefs without being forced to participate in practices that contradict them.
This ruling came as a victory for Mariyah Green, a former student at Bogan High School in Chicago, who was awarded $150,000 for having her First Amendment rights violated.
At the heart of the matter was a program called “Quiet Time,” which was required by the school and involved practices related to Hinduism, such as Transcendental Meditation and a Puja initiation rite.
This put Green, who is a Christian, in a difficult position as the program involved acknowledging the power of Hindu deities, which went against her faith in Jesus Christ alone.
The situation Green faced was monumental: she was told that if she didn’t participate in the program, not only could her grades suffer, but she might also be excluded from graduation ceremonies and, for her personally, it could affect her place on the basketball team.
Feeling cornered by these threats to her education and her passion for basketball, Green pretended to have a knee injury to avoid participating in a ritual that contradicted her Christian beliefs.
“Mariyah Green’s Christian faith and her dedication to Jesus Christ makes the worship of others, such as these idols, unthinkable,” John Mauck, Green’s lawyer, explained.
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“Therefore, on the second day of this training in Transcendental Meditation, Mariyah told the instructor that her knee was injured in order to avoid kneeling before the image of a man in a photograph on a table in the middle of the room, that she described as looking like Buddha,” he continued.
“This was an egregious abuse of Mariyah’s religious rights,” Mauck said in a statement.
Mauck was very critical of the program stating, “The innocuously labeled Quiet Time was developed by the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in conjunction with the University of Chicago – both of whom profited from its implementation in Chicago Public Schools.”
“Throughout its design and conduct, these institutions were all aware of the religious content of the Transcendental Meditation sessions, the like of which had already been removed from public schools elsewhere due to Constitutional violations,” he added.
The court’s decision reaffirms the importance of Constitutional rights, particularly the freedom of religion.
“Spiritual Meditation was terrible beneath its masks,” Green stated. “I am happy that the legal system allowed a judgment totaling $150,000 to be issued against the Lynch Foundation and the Chicago Board of Education, compelling them to admit that forcing Hindu worship on me caused me harm.”
The case serves as a reminder and a warning that the personal religious convictions of students should be respected and protected within public education systems.
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