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ARTICLE · 12 JANUARY 2024

Religious Institutions Update: January 2024

Failure to Extend Extracurricular Opportunities to Parochial School Students Violates Free Exercise

United StatesEmployment and HR

Key Cases

Free Exercise

Failure to Extend Extracurricular Opportunities to Parochial School Students Violates Free Exercise

In Religious Rights Foundation of Pa. v. State College Area Sch. Dist., No. 23-CV-01144, 2023 WL 8359957 (M.D. Pa. Dec. 1, 2023), the district court ruled that the defendant's denial of extracurricular and co-curricular opportunities to students at parochial schools within the school district while extending them to home-schooled and charter-schooled students within the school district violates the Free Exercise Clause and Equal Protection Clause. The defendant characterized its policy as generally applicable or a policy prohibiting private students' involvement in extracurricular programming. The court rejected this framing because of the exemptions for home-schooled and charter-schooled students. The district argued that if it allowed parochial students to participate, it would take away opportunities from enrolled district students,

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