In Hilsenrath v. School District. of the Chathams, (3rd Cir., May 5, 2025), the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals held that videos about Islam shown in a 7th grade World Cultures and Geography class did not violate the Establishment Clause. The court focused on the Supreme Court’s new “historical practices and understandings” test in Establishment Clause cases. The court said in part:
This kind of historical inquiry “requires serious work. And that work is especially challenging here because “free public education was virtually nonexistent at the time the Constitution was adopted.” But “[h]istorical tradition can be established by analogical reasoning,”…
… [The] videos were presented in an academic rather than devotional context, they do “not come close to crossing any line” separating permissible curricular materials from impermissible proselytization….
… [E]ven assuming the Establishment Clause requires equal treatment in primary and secondary school curricula, the record does not show favoritism here. Besides Islam, C.H. and his classmates were introduced to Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. And the World Cultures and Geography course represented only a sampling of the expansive world religions curriculum offered at the School District of the Chathams….
…So assuming the Establishment Clause required the Board to treat religions equally, the record shows that it satisfied that requirement here….
This Establishment Clause challenge comes at a time when the “one-size-fits-all test” from Lemon v. Kurtzman …, has been emphatically rejected, and there is no longer any lurking constitutional mandate of secularism in governmental affairs….
Thus, with the lifting of the constitutional mandate of secularism, teaching about religious matters in a public school does not violate the Establishment Clause. For that reason, the instructional materials about Islamic beliefs, practices, and modes of worship do not offend that constitutional provision….