The Chicago Board of Education and a foundation that sponsored a meditation program in the city’s schools will pay a former student $150,000 under a court-accepted settlement after the Christian student refused to participate in “mandated” Hindu rituals, the student’s attorneys said Wednesday.
Mariyah Green, a student at Bogan High School, said she was cautioned to “pray or don’t play” when she refused to participate in a “Puja initiation rite” that was part of the “Quiet Time” meditation program sponsored by the David Lynch Foundation.
The former student’s attorney, John Mauck, called the program “a thinly veiled Hinduistic religious program encompassing the practice of Transcendental Meditation.”
The “Puja” ceremony required participants to “make obeisance” to one of the Hindu deities and invite those deities “to channel their powers through those present” for the ceremonies, Mr. Mauck’s news release said.
“Mariyah Green’s Christian faith and her dedication to Jesus Christ makes worship of others, such as these idols, unthinkable,” Mr. Mauck said. “Therefore, on the second day of this training in Transcendental Meditation, Mariyah told the instructor that her knee was injured in order to avoid kneeling before the image of a man in a photograph on a table in the middle of the room, that she described as looking like Buddha.”
Ms. Green said she was told that non-participation in the Quiet Time program would “negatively” affect her grades and her eligibility for the school’s basketball program. She said she had transferred to Bogan specifically for its basketball program and felt she was “forced” to participate in Quiet Time activities.
“This was an egregious abuse of Mariyah’s religious rights,” Mr. Mauck said. “The innocuously labeled Quiet Time was developed by the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in conjunction with the University of Chicago – both of whom profited from its implementation in Chicago Public Schools.
“Throughout its design and conduct, these institutions were all aware of the religious content of the Transcendental Meditation sessions, the like of which had already been removed from public schools elsewhere due to constitutional violations.”
A federal district court approved the settlement Oct. 23.
On Friday, both the Chicago Public School and the David Lynch Foundation responded to a Washington Times request for comment on the Green case. The Lynch Foundation said the $75,000 settlement “involves no finding of liability by the court against or by any party.” Its news release said the foundation made the offer “to control costs and expenses associated with protracted litigation.”
A Chicago Public Schools spokesperson, via email, said the district “removed” the Quiet Time program from schools in 2020 and “has always denied, and continues to deny, any liability as a result of Quiet Time,” while saying the meditation program “did not violate any student’s constitutional rights.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the nature of the settlement.
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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