A federal judge awarded $150,000 in damages and legal fees to a Christian former Chicago Public Schools student who said she was allegedly coerced into participating in “Hinduistic rituals” during her high school’s meditation program, the Chicago Sun-Times reported last week.
“U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly ruled last week in favor of Mariyah Green, who had filed a lawsuit alleging she felt coerced to participate in the Quiet Time meditation program at Bogan High School in Ashburn despite her Christian beliefs,” according to the report.
Green’s attorney John Mauck released a statement, calling the meditation program a “thinly veiled Hinduistic religious program” that required students to “make obeisance various ways to a member of the Hindu deities.”
“Mariyah Green’s Christian faith and her dedication to Jesus Christ makes worship of others, such as these idols, unthinkable,” Mauck said.
Green said she believed she had to participate in the program because it counted toward her grades, and she was worried about being cut from the basketball team for underperforming academically, Mauck said. Green had transferred to Bogan High School specifically to play on its basketball team, the report states.
A Chicago Public Schools told the outlet in an emailed statement that the district stopped the meditation program in 2020, “but maintains that Quiet Time did not violate any student’s constitutional rights.”
The spokesperson added that the judge’s decision was due to a “voluntary resolution between the parties akin to a settlement.”
“The District has always denied, and continues to deny, any liability as a result of Quiet Time, and there has not been any finding of liability in this case by a judge or a jury,” the spokesperson continued.
“Both the Chicago Board of Education and the David Lynch Foundation, which developed the program, were named in the lawsuit. CPS is responsible for paying $75,000, and so is the foundation, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening,” the report states. “The foundation’s website states the meditation program is intended to reduce ‘toxic levels of stress; in the lives of young people, and that it can lead to an increase in graduation rates and a reduction in schoolwide suspensions.”
Green alleged in her lawsuit that the program was held during school hours, where students were required to engage in an initiation ceremony called “Puja,” which is an “expression of gratitude” to the “dead founds of the practice,” according to the report.
The lawsuit alleged that instructors chanted Sanskrit words during Puja “recognizing the power possessed by various Hindu deities and invitations of those same Hindu deities to channel their powers” without informing students of the meaning of the chants, according to the report.
When Green learned the “hidden religious nature” of the meditation program, she allegedly began informing other students and teachers, who allegedly reminded her to meditate, the report states.
Green who graduated in 2020, alleged that she felt “alone and angry” from her views being dismissed and from allegedly not being given a choice to opt out. Mauck called the meditation program an “egregious abuse of Mariyah’s religious right.”
“We thank the court for the recognition of the critical Constitutional issues at stake here. Mariyah Green’s concerns have been justified, her voice has been heard, and the offending parties have been held accountable,” he said.
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