During the 2014-2015 school year, Wood was an eleventh-grade student at La Plata High School, a public high school in Charles County, Maryland.[1] As part of Wood’s eleventh-grade curriculum, they were required to take a world history course covering the period of 1500 A.D. to present.[2] The course covered topics ranging from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution, to World War I and World War II.[3] The smallest section of this curriculum was the five-day unit entitled “The Muslim World.”[4] As part of this section, Wood was shown a PowerPoint with a comparative faith statement: “Most Muslim’s faith is stronger than the average Christian.”[5] Additionally, Wood was required to write out the five pillars of Islam, a portion of which is known as the shahada, which declares “there is no god but Allah and Mohamad is the messenger of Allah.”[6] Wood’s father objected to the use of these statements, demanded that his daughter not be indoctrinated in Islam, and that his daughter should be given an alternate assignment.[7] However, the father’s objections fell on deaf ears and so he directed Wood not to answer any question related to Islam, which did not affect Wood’s final letter grade, only her percentage in the class.[8]

Wood argued that the shahada portion of the assignment forced her to deny the very existence of God.[9] Additionally, Wood argued that the challenged materials lacked any secular purpose and had the effect of “promoting and endorsing Islam.”[10] The Fourth Circuit disagreed with Wood’s arguments and her appeal for certiorari to the Supreme Court was denied.[11] The basis for the Fourth Circuit’s opinion stemmed from the three-prong test for Establishment Clause claims that was set forth in Lemon v. Kurtzman.[12] In order to withstand First Amendment scrutiny under this test, “government conduct must be (1) driven in part by a secular purpose; (2) must have a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion; and (3) must not excessively entangle church and State.”[13] If any one of these factors is violated, the government has violated the Establishment Clause.[14]

The Fourth Circuit did not take the challenged statements in isolation, rather they looked at the context of these statements in relation to the world history course’s curriculum as a whole.[15] Under the first prong, the court found that there was a secular purpose in comparing religions and the statements were merely intended to test the student’s knowledge.[16] Similarly, the court found under the second Lemon factor that the shahada statements were a very small part of the world history class as a whole, were a part of the curriculum and were directly relevant to the secular lessons being taught.[17] Viewing these statements under the context of the whole class, the court held that the statements could not be reasonably believed to favor one religion over another.[18] Finally, the court held that the challenged materials did not excessively entangle the church and State, because there was no advancement or inhibition of religion.[19] As such, Maryland public schools are permitted to include a teaching of religion that differs from the beliefs of some of the students and does not prohibit testing a student’s knowledge through a requirement of writing a profession of faith.

Thaddeus C. Sheehy, Jr. is a 3L at the University of Baltimore and will graduate in December 2019. Thaddeus is a second-year staff editor on Law Forum. Thaddeus is from Anne Arundel County and currently resides there. Thaddeus currently works at Medifast, Inc. located in Baltimore City.

[1] Wood, 916 F.3d at 312.

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] Id. at 312-13.

[7] Wood, 916 F.3d at 313.

[8] Id.

[9] Id.

[10] Id.

[11] Id.

[12] Id.

[13] Wood, 916 F.3d at 314; see also Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).

[14] Wood, 916 F.3d at 314; quoting Buxton, 862 F.3d at 432 (quoting Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 583, 107 S.Ct. 2573, 96 L.Ed.2d 510 (1987)).

[15] Wood, 916 F.3d at 314-15.

[16] Id. at 315-16.

[17] Id. at 316-18.

[18] Id.

[19] Id. at 318.