California has agreed to allow a group of Orthodox Jewish parents to use public funds for the purpose of placing their children in special education programs of a sectarian nature.
An agreement was reached Monday in the case of Loffman et al. v. California Department of Education et al., which questioned if state officials could enforce a provision in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act barring state funds from going to religious schools.
According to a joint motion for entry of consent judgment and permanent injunction filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, both parties agreed to “judgment in Plaintiffs’ favor and a permanent injunction … to resolve all claims raised by Plaintiffs against Defendants in this case.”
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“Defendants agree that they shall not appeal from any ruling that adopts this Consent Judgment, which, along with the Settlement Agreement, represents the full scope of the agreement between the Parties. Defendants further agree that the relief granted herein is fair and equitable,” stated the joint motion.
“The Parties agree that Plaintiffs are the prevailing parties and therefore are entitled to reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs, the amount of which is resolved by the Parties’ separate Settlement Agreement.”
Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, a religious liberty law firm that helped to represent the parents, released a statement Monday celebrating the agreement.
“California spent decades treating Jewish kids like second-class citizens,” he stated. “Today’s settlement ensures that Jewish kids with disabilities can access the resources they need and deserve — just like everyone else.”
In March 2023, the Jewish parents filed a complaint, naming as defendants the California Department of Education, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, the Los Angeles Unified School District and Anthony Aguilar, chief of special education, equity and access.
The lawsuit contends that the defendants violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by not allowing funds for parents to send their children with special needs to Orthodox Jewish schools.
The California Education Code mandated that any schools that receive federal IDEA funding have to be “nonsectarian.”
In August 2023, U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, ruled against the parents. She wrote that the complaint “mischaracterizes the nature of the available benefits” and that “California’s nonsectarian requirement applies to schools, not IDEA-eligible children and their parents.”
But in October of last year, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, with Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw, a President Bill Clinton appointee, writing that the state failed to prove that the “nonsectarian requirement is narrowly tailored to serve” government neutrality.
“Parent Plaintiffs are required to choose between the special education benefits made available through public school enrollment (and subsequent referral to a [non-public, non-sectarian school]) and education in an Orthodox Jewish setting,” wrote Wardlaw.
“Because this presents a ‘tendency to coerce’ them ‘into acting contrary to their religious beliefs,’ we find that Parent Plaintiffs have alleged a cognizable burden on their free exercise of religion.”
