Last week, Agudath Israel of America filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in favor of a coalition of Orthodox Jewish schools and parents of special needs children who are suing the California Department of Education and others for discriminating against religious individuals by preventing religious school students from receiving full funding for special education services.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a federal law that provides funding for special education programs in both public and private schools to enable children with disabilities to obtain the education that will help them succeed. However, the law in California mandates that IDEA funding can only be given to non-religious schools, even if the religious school is best able to meet a particular student’s needs.
The lawsuit, filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, was dismissed and is now being appealed at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Agudath Israel’s brief argues that religious schools should be eligible to receive the services. The submission emphasizes that being in a religious setting is a vital part of meeting a child’s educational needs:
“[A]n Orthodox student with disabilities … can maximize her potential only if she receives an education in a religious setting—one that follows the same daily practices and routines with which she is familiar from her house and community. The entire premise of the IDEA is that children with special needs, more so than other children, require an educational setting that is appropriate for their specific circumstances. Placement in a setting ill-suited for a child could have far-reaching detrimental consequences for the healthy development of that child.”
Agudath Israel thanks attorneys Shai Berman, Yehudah Buchweitz, Daniel Lifton, and David Yolkut of Weil, Gotshal, and Manges for authoring the 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 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.”