Yesterday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an important decision in Loffman v. California Department of Education, a case involving special education funding to students in religious schools.
Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and state laws in California, special needs students specially-certified nonpublic schools. However, California restricts this certification to non-religious schools, thereby preventing students from being placed by the district at a religious school even if the religious school is best able to meet a particular student’s needs. In the Court’s October 29, 2024 decision, the Court held that limiting this program to nonreligious schools violated the First Amendment.
The case, which was brought by the nationally renowned religious freedom attorneys at the Becket Fund, with the support of Teach Coalition, attracted significant attention among Jewish advocacy groups. Agudath Israel of America filed an amicus curiae brief, urging the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to invalidate California’s restrictive law.
Agudath Israel thanks attorneys Shai Berman, Yehudah Buchweitz, Daniel Lifton, and David Yolkut of Weil, Gotshal, and Manges for authoring the amicus brief, with assistance from Agudath Israel’s General Counsel Daniel Kaminetsky.
“Agudath Israel has spent decades advocating on the federal, state and local level for greater access of special education funding and services to families choosing Jewish day schools,” said Rabbi A.D. Motzen, Agudath Israel’s national director of government affairs. “We will continue to fight in Congress, statehouses and courthouses for these students and their families.”
“It is essential that laws that are discriminatory or deny rights afforded to religious citizens by the Constitution are challenged,” said Mr. Kaminetsky. “Agudath Israel will always act to ensure these rights are not abrogated.”