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California school district sued over field trip to mosque where students allegedly donned Muslim garb

Confirmed

Faith Desk

2026-08-25-california-school-district-sued-over-field-trip-to-mosque-where-studen
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DEARBORN SCHOOLS APOLOGIZE AFTER 200-PLUS STUDENTS MISTAKENLY SERVED PORK DURING RAMADAN FIRE strategist warned that the school violated the First Amendment if it compelled students to wear religious outfits. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via ) "The vast majority of the people demonizing the teachers who arranged and chaperoned this field trip simply don’t know them," Thurston wrote in an op-ed for the campus newspaper.

In a comment to Fox News Digital, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Adam Goldstein said that if students were compelled to don religious garb, this would be in violation of the First Amendment.

The center, which is not being sued, released a statement this week reaffirming its commitment to hosting groups like the one from Palo Alto High School. In a comment to Fox News Digital , David Rosenberg-Wohl, who is representing the parents, said that the issue at hand is a public school like Palo Alto High School specifically promoting Islam in its Social Justice Pathway curriculum.

“The flavor of this trip was that this particular faith is particularly worthy for this particular purpose (social justice),” David Rosenberg-Wohl, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, said in an interview. The mosque’s communications director, Mongi Dhaouadi, said staff simply left the books on a table at the back of the hall for anyone who wanted to take one home.

Local NBC affiliate KRON4 said the superintendent noted that district policy requires instruction about religion to be “academic, not devotional. Kelman, a Stanford professor of education and Jewish studies, said the lawsuit highlights the challenges public high schools face in teaching about religion in an experiential way.

“It’s one thing to say these are the Five Pillars of Islam, or these are the books of the Torah — you can answer those kinds of questions on a multiple-choice test,” he said. “But there are developmental differences between 18-year-olds and 15- or 16-year-olds that their teachers should be conscious of,” he said.

The separation of church and state is a bedrock issue here," Rosenberg-Wohl said. Rosenberg-Wohl said some of the photos were removed after the lawsuit was filed.

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