California school district sued over field trip to mosque where students allegedly donned Muslim garb

A group of multi-faith parents has filed a joint lawsuit against Palo Alto Unified School District in California and Palo Alto High School's principal Brent Kline over a field trip to a local mosque last year.

According to the August 7 lawsuit, as part of the school's Social Justice Pathway curriculum, students took a tour of a mosque hosted by the Muslim Community Association and took part in several religious activities and were allegedly encouraged to don religious garb without parental consent.

"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 read. "During that visit, students allegedly were provided with Qurans and taught that Islam, in particular, promotes social justice."

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"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," the complaint continued. "Female students were provided hijabs to wear and that all students were gifted Qurans to take home for personal use."

The lawsuit, which was filed by a group of Jewish, Hindu and Zoroastrian parents, also claimed that students spoke to Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who has come under controversy for making allegedly antisemitic statements in the past.

In a comment to Fox News Digital, David Rosenberg-Wohl, who is representing the parents, said that the issue at hand is a public school like Palo Alto High School specifically promoting 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 said.

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The Muslim Community Association stood by its original statement, saying that the organization was "deeply concerned" over 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 told Fox News Digital.

Palo Alto Unified Superintendent Jason Glass informed Fox News Digital that he is reviewing the allegations but "will not comment further on pending litigation."

Though some parents were upset by the field trip, some students appeared to defend the outing, suggesting that the grievances were exaggerated.

Student newspaper "The Paly Voice" editor-in-chief Juni Thurston disputed claims that female students were forced to don hijabs and that students were indoctrinated with Islamic beliefs on these trips.

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"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 campus newspaper. "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."

However, she acknowledged concerns over Billoo's presence on the field trip and agreed that she should not have been part of the experience, though her role was "limited."

In a comment to Fox News Digital, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Adam Goldstein said that if students were compelled to don religious garb, this would be in violation of the First Amendment.

"Just as the First Amendment prevents public schools from forcing students to pledge allegiance to the flag, it prevents those schools from compelling them to wear religious attire. If students were required to do that as part of a curricular field trip, it would conflict with the First Amendment's bar on compelled speech," Goldstein said.