Underwood is the Susan Engeleiter Professor of Education Law, Policy, and Practice, and the former dean of the School of Education.
Underwood begins by suggesting that the lives of students today are vastly different from those of 40, 20, or even 10 years ago. She explains that, in some places, schools risk provoking anger from one part of their community in an attempt to be inclusive to another.
She points to one example, from Citizens for Quality Education v. Barrera (S.D. Cal 2018), which addressed efforts by the San Diego Unified School District to protect and be inclusive of Muslim students.
Other members of the community, however, saw this as an attempt to establish a preference for Islam and Muslim students, especially when the school board delegated power to a religious organization. In response, the district broke ties with the religious organization, but they remained firm in their commitment to school safety for all students, including Muslim students.
According to Underwood, the district subsequently implemented a policy that put in place efforts to promote cultural and religious tolerance and understanding, which were not exclusively concerned with religious-based bullying or targeted towards a specific faith. The plaintiffs sought to prevent this policy from going into effect, claiming a violation of the Establishment Clause.
Underwood explains the reasoning and legality of this case, suggesting that to use political divisiveness as a sole determining factor in cases such a this would be illogical. She states that our communities are often divisive and litigious, and this frequently ends up being the school district’s problem.
Read the entire column here.