CMRN-SFBA v. Palo Alto Unified School District

Case at a glance

Case name

Community Members for Religious Neutrality in Public Schools – San Francisco Bay Area (CMRN-SFBA), et al. v. Palo Alto Unified School District, Brent Kline, et al.

Case number

5:26-cv-08249-VKD

Court

U.S. District Court, Northern District of California

Filed

August 7, 2026

Defendants

Palo Alto Unified School District; Brent Kline, Principal of Palo Alto High School, sued in his official capacity; Does 1–10

Relief sought

Declaratory judgment, injunctive relief, nominal damages, and attorney’s fees. No compensatory damages are sought from the district.

Counsel

David M. Rosenberg-Wohl, Hershenson Rosenberg-Wohl, P.C., San Francisco

Complaint

Complaint, filed Aug. 7, 2026 (PDF)

What the complaint alleges

The following summarizes allegations in the complaint. They have not been proven, and the defendants have not yet responded.

The Social Justice Pathway and the mosque visit

Palo Alto High School runs a three-year academic program, the Social Justice Pathway, spanning the sophomore through senior years. The complaint alleges the program includes field trips to a mosque at the Muslim Community Association Bay Area — the only house of worship included in the program.

During the Fall 2025 visit, the complaint alleges, minor students were provided Muslim religious attire and encouraged to wear it on site; female students were given hijabs; all students were gifted Qurans to take home; students observed a Dhuhr prayer and a discussion of the meaning of worship; and students engaged with participants in the Noor Hifz Academy, a Quran-memorization program. Students were taught, the complaint alleges, that Islam in particular promotes social justice.

Photography of students

The complaint alleges students were photographed inside the mosque by the host institution while wearing religious attire, and that identifiable images were later publicly posted for promotional or community-facing purposes — without specific, informed parental consent for photography and public use in a religious context. Parents had signed off on a field trip to the Muslim Community Association; they had not consented to their children’s images being used in that way.

Images posted by the MCA have been removed following the lawsuit.

The outside speaker

The complaint alleges that students were exposed during the same field trip to Zahra Billoo, described in the complaint as a controversial speaker with publicly documented hostile statements concerning Jews, and that she was permitted access to students to advocate personal religious and political views without balancing perspective, adequate district vetting, or supervision.

A recurring practice

The complaint alleges these visits were not isolated. It cites a similar visit reflected in social-media posts from October 19, 2022, and alleges that a three-year program cycle is sufficient to expose each cohort of Social Justice Pathway students to the Muslim Community Association — with the next such exposure expected no later than Fall 2028 absent an injunction.

The claims

The complaint pleads eight claims for relief. The first four, against Principal Kline in his official capacity, arise under 42 U.S.C. § 1983; the remaining four are against the district under California law.

1. Establishment Clause — First Amendment, via § 1983. Sponsoring activities whose purpose and effect was to endorse and prefer one religion, in a school setting where participation carries coercive pressure on minors.
2. Free Speech / compelled expression — First Amendment, via § 1983. Encouraging students to don religious attire and appear in photographs publicly associating them with a faith burdens the right to refrain from expressing religious affiliation.
3. Equal Protection — Fourteenth Amendment, via § 1983. Selectively elevating one religion without comparable inclusion of other traditions disfavored and stigmatized students and families of other faiths.
4. Due Process — parental rights and informational privacy — Fourteenth Amendment, via § 1983. Parents have protected interests in directing their children’s religious upbringing; students have protected interests in avoiding nonconsensual attribution of religious affiliation.
5. California Constitution, article I, sections 1, 2(a), 4, and 7 — privacy, free speech, no preference in religion, and equal protection.
6. California Education Code sections 200–220, 35330, and 51500 — barring religious discrimination in school programs, making field trips an extension of the school day, and prohibiting sectarian or biased advocacy in public schools.
7. California constitutional and common-law privacy — facilitating photography and public dissemination of student images in a religious context without informed authorization.
8. Negligence / negligent supervision — failing to supervise the field trip, to limit unauthorized photography, and to vet outside speakers in a setting involving minors.

What the case asks for

The plaintiffs are not seeking a damages award from the district. They ask the court to declare the challenged practices unlawful and to order that they stop:

• An injunction against school-sponsored activities that endorse religion, coerce student religious participation, or publicly associate students with a religion without specific, informed parental consent.
• An order requiring constitutionally adequate policies, training, and supervision governing field trips, student photography, parental consent, and outside-speaker vetting.
• An order requiring removal, so far as within the defendants’ control, of publicly disseminated student images from the challenged field trip.
• Nominal damages and attorney’s fees under Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 1021.5.

The plaintiffs

CMRN-SFBA is an organization of Bay Area community members concerned with preserving religious neutrality in public education. The individual plaintiffs include Jewish parents and former students at Palo Alto High School, a Hindu parent in Los Altos, a Zoroastrian parent of the Parsi community in Sunnyvale, and a Jewish community member in Stanford. Four plaintiffs proceed anonymously, having asked the court for confidentiality on the ground that public identification would expose them to recognized forms of personal harm.

Interested in joining the case?