School district discriminates against religious students with extracurricular ban: lawsuit

Parents of parochial school students in Pennsylvania are suing their public school district for allegedly violating their religious rights by refusing to allow their children to participate in extracurricular and co-curricular activities.

Parents of two Centre County parochial school students filed a lawsuit on July 10 with the aid of the Religious Rights Foundation of Pennsylvania and the Thomas More Society against the State College Area School District (SCASD), according to a press release from the Thomas More Society.

The complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, alleges that SCASD and its board violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by barring students at religious schools from activities at public schools.

The lawsuit seeks a court order to allow students at parochial schools to participate in such activities.