Religious freedom’s string of courtroom victories has reached the unlikeliest of places. On October 28, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a discriminatory California law barring religious schools from participating in a special-education program violates the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. The case, Loffman v. California Department of Education, was brought by Orthodox Jewish families who sought to admit their disabled children to private Jewish schools under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act but found themselves thwarted by California on the grounds that the schools were “sectarian.” In a sharply worded opinion, the court rejected California’s argument and instead sided with the families, affirming their constitutional right to access public benefits without sacrificing their faith commitments.
As the Ninth Circuit’s opinion makes clear, California’s stance in this case is a relic of an outdated and discredited approach to questions of religious freedom. Several recent Supreme Court decisions, including Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, and Carson v. Makin make clear that religious institutions cannot be excluded from generally available public programs or be made to secularize as a condition of their participation. In Loffman, California argued that it could disregard these decisions by labeling the program at issue a “public education” program rather than a “public benefit” program. But the court saw through this strained justification, recognizing that California’s rules in fact unconstitutionally target the parents’ preferred schools because of their religious character.
The Loffman verdict is not just a legal win for the families involved; it’s a strike at the heart of California’s pervasive and unconstitutional practice of discriminating against religious institutions and believers. California law contains an array of rules that systematically discriminate against religious institutions, barring them from participating in public programs. Consider a few examples. The state bars homeschooling parents who work with independent-study charter schools from including any religious content in their children’s customized curriculum. It also excludes religious schools from publicly funded pre-K, teacher-diversity, work-study, and teacher affordable-housing programs. California even prohibits school districts from contracting with “sectarian” hospitals to instruct patients with special needs. While the Ninth Circuit’s Loffman decision clarifies that such policies violate the Free Exercise Clause, they nevertheless remain on the books.
Loffman underscores that a core purpose of the Free Exercise Clause is to ensure that religious institutions and families are not treated as second-class entities. The Ninth Circuit rightly acknowledged that California cannot invoke church-state separation to justify discrimination. The state’s nonsectarian requirement, which had kept religious families and schools from accessing benefits available to their secular counterparts, is plainly unconstitutional.
The Ninth Circuit’s ruling continues religious liberty’s courtroom momentum. It builds upon recent religious-liberty verdicts from the Supreme Court and bolsters the growing body of case law affirming religious Americans’ right to participate in public life without prejudice. And since California is not the only state with discriminatory statutes and programs, Loffman could prompt other states to change course. The decision should serve as a wake-up call to state legislators nationwide: religious institutions are not peripheral entities to be tolerated, but vital components of our civil society that deserve equal respect and treatment.
California now faces a pivotal choice. If it appeals, it will probably lose, and the decision rebuking its argument will likely make it even clearer that the state cannot forbid religious institutions from participating in public programs.
The Loffman ruling is a victory for religious families seeking fair treatment, for disabled children in need of specialized educational support, and for advocates of a truly pluralistic society. The Ninth Circuit was unequivocal: if states want to create public-benefit programs, they cannot pick and choose who gets to participate based on religion. As more courts recognize this principle, exclusionary practices like California’s will become relics of the past.
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