A group of multi-faith parents have come together to file a joint lawsuit against Palo Alto Unified School District, located in California, and Palo Alto High School principal Brent Kline, due to a field trip to a local mosque that took place in 2025. The lawsuit says that the field trip was part of the school’s Social Justice Pathway curriculum.
Students took a tour of the local mosque, which was hosted by the Muslim Community Association and participated in several Islamic religious activities. “Those in attendance were also encouraged to put on religious garb, though without consent from their parents. During the Fall 2025 mosque visit, students who were minors allegedly were provided with Muslim religious attire and encouraged to wear it while on site,” the complaint said.
“During that visit, students allegedly were provided with Qurans and taught that Islam, in particular, promotes social justice,” the lawsuit added. “The field-trip activities allegedly included observation of a Dhuhr prayer, discussion of the meaning of worship, and engagement with participants in the Noor Hifz Academy, the host institution’s religious youth program in which Islamic students memorize the Quran.”
“Female students were provided hijabs to wear and that all students were gifted Qurans to take home for personal use,” the suit revealed, according to a report from Fox News. The lawsuit, filed by a group of Jewish, Hindu, and Zoroastrian parents, also stated that students spoke to Zahra Billoo, who is the executive director of the Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who has been heavily criticized for making antisemitic statements in the past.
David Rosenberg-Wohl, the attorney representing the parents, told Fox that the issue is that a public school is specifically promoting the religion of Islam in its Social Justice Pathway curriculum. “In effect, kids are being told that if they are progressive and interested in social justice, Islam is the faith for them. That is not the business of a public school. It’s not an issue of religion v. religion. It’s an American one. The separation of church and state is a bedrock issue here,” Rosenberg-Wohl explained.
The Muslim Community Association doubled down on its original statement, going on to say it was “deeply concerned” about the filing of the lawsuit. “Treating students’ exposure to ordinary Muslim faith and practice as inherently coercive or threatening risks reinforcing the very Islamophobia and misunderstanding that that educational engagement should help overcome,” the group said in comments to Fox News Digital.
Palo Alto Unified Superintendent Jason Glass told Fox News that he is looking into the allegations but “will not comment further on pending litigation.” While some parents were angered by the field trip, a few of the students defended the outing, saying the grievances were exaggerated. Student newspaper, “The Paly Voice,” editor-in-chief Juni Thurston, disputed claims made about female students being forced to wear hijabs.
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Thurston also denied that students were indoctrinated with Islamic beliefs during the trip. The vast majority of the people demonizing the teachers who arranged and chaperoned this field trip simply don’t know them,” Thurston wrote in an op-ed for the paper. “The idea that they would be working to indoctrinate students into Islam, or any religion, is an idea extremely foreign to me as a student who has had them as my teachers for the past two years. But this narrative is nonetheless dominating media coverage of the event.”
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