Pennsylvania school district sued over access to sports, extracurricular activities for private school students

A Pennsylvania school district is being sued by a religious liberty watchdog over the school district’s denial of access to sports and other extracurricular activities to parochial school students.

In a statement announcing the lawsuit, Thomas More Society counsel Thomas Breth said that the State College Area School District (SCASD) regularly allows homeschool and charter school students to participate in sports activities, but not religious private school students.

“The school district has denied those same opportunities to students attending religious schools, based solely on their religious identity,” said Breth. “That forces parochial school students to choose between their religious beliefs and the right to participate in extracurricular activities and advanced classes.” 

The plaintiffs previously requested that the school district allow parochial school students to participate in sports activities. The district denied the request in an email in May, the lawsuit states, reported the Centre Daily Times. 

“After carefully considering it, we cannot grant your request to change our longstanding practice of not having private school students participate on our PIAA sports teams,” said the email, according to a copy of the lawsuit provided by Fox News. “The reason is the district has ample, and sometimes excess, participation for our teams, so there is no need to expand. Additionally, if we allow private school students to take part, we could be taking away opportunities from SCASD students.” 

Breth said that similar cases have appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, and denying “generally available benefits” based solely on religious identity is unconstitutional, as it interferes with the free exercise of religious beliefs. 

“The Supreme Court has made it clear that such denials can be justified only by a state interest of the highest order,” Breth added. “That is certainly not the case in the State College Area School District.” 

Specifically, the 24-page lawsuit claims that SCASD’s anti-religious bias is a “longstanding practice” to discriminate against parochial school students, as readily admitted by the district’s email to the plaintiffs.  

The lawsuit says that the bias also violates the school district’s stated policy of non-discrimination on the basis of religious beliefs.  

The plaintiffs are identified only by their initials, but they are taxpayers who live in the school district, reported the Daily Times.  

The Religious Rights Foundation of PA said in a statement that if some students who are not registered at a public school in the school district are able to participate in extracurricular activities, then all students should be able to participate. 

“We should not be punished for pursuing our religious beliefs,” the foundation said.  

The complaint was filed July 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania by Dillon McCandless King Coulter & Graham LLP on behalf of the Religious Rights Foundation of PA, which is supported by the Thomas More Society.