Jewish, Hindu, Zoroastrian parents sue California school district over mosque field trip

A group of 10 Jewish, Hindu, and Zoroastrian parents filed a lawsuit against Palo Alto Unified School District and Palo Alto High Principal Brent Kline for reportedly pushing students to wear Islamic religious attire during a field trip to a local mosque.

The lawsuit (5:2026cv08249) was brought by the group Community Members for Religious Neutrality in Public Schools, San Francisco Bay Area. Among the plaintiffs are Jewish parents Jafi Lipson, Josh Lehrer, former Jewish student Sasha Ava Lehrer, Hindu parent Pawan Deshpande, Zoroastrian parent Dinsha Mistree, Jewish resident Linor Levav, and four anonymous Jewish plaintiffs.

According to the suit, which was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on August 7, the Palo Alto High School students were encouraged to wear Muslim religious attire, including hijabs for the girls, during the visit to the Muslim Community Association’s mosque in Santa Clara in fall 2025. They were also given Qurans as gifts to take home.

“The district failed to maintain religious neutrality, failed to ensure equal treatment among faiths, failed to protect student privacy and failed to vet, supervise, and monitor religiously divisive outside speakers during the school-sponsored event,” reads the lawsuit.

Students also engaged with Noor Hifz Academy, the mosque’s religious youth program in which Islamic students memorize the Quran, and heard from Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Council of American-Islamic Relations.

Billoo was 'allowed unfettered access to students'

The lawsuit alleged that Billoo was “allowed unfettered access to students to advocate personal religious and political views without balancing perspective or adequate supervision.” The plaintiffs note that Billoo has previously made "hostile and discriminatory statements regarding Jews."

The parents added that school officials “knew or should have known of the recurring nature of the challenged field trips, the foreseeable risk that students would be exposed to religious activity and ideological messaging during those events, and the risk that student images would be captured and publicly disseminated in a religious context.”

“Despite such knowledge, PAUSD failed to adopt and enforce adequate safeguards, thereby causing the constitutional injuries alleged in this Complaint,” the suit states.

The lawsuit also claims that photos were taken of students on the trip without parental consent.

No informed parental authorization

The parents say the school “facilitated photography and public dissemination of student images in a religious context without specific, informed parental authorization and by placing students in circumstances that publicly associated them with a particular faith.”

Billoo told the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday that “Public schools and the government have an obligation to remain neutral toward religion, but what neutrality does not mean is shielding students entirely."

“One of the most important ways we combat hate is to learn about each other,” Billoo said. “I am concerned that this group of parents not only wants to counteract that for their own children … but is attempting to intimidate schools and school districts from doing necessary work of educating the next generation."

PAUSD Superintendent Jason Glass told the SF Chronicle that district policy requires that teachings about religion be academic, and not devotional, and that no faith may be promoted or denigrated. He said PAUSD is reviewing its practices and would not comment further on pending litigation.