A federal lawsuit accuses Palo Alto Unified School District and Palo Alto High School Principal Brent Kline of violating church-state separation during a student field trip to a mosque.

The suit, filed Aug. 7 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges Paly's Social Justice Pathway (SJP) program engaged in "sponsorship and facilitation of religious activity and elevation of Islam vis-à-vis other faiths" when students visited the Santa Clara Muslim Community Association in fall 2025. It primarily seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, though the complaint's prayer for relief also requests nominal damages.

The lead plaintiff is Community Members for Religious Neutrality in Public Schools – San Francisco Bay Area. Named plaintiffs include Jewish Paly parents Jafi Lipson and Josh Lehrer, Hindu parent Pawan Deshpande of Los Altos, Zoroastrian parent Dinsha Mistree of Sunnyvale, and Jewish community member Linor Levav of Stanford. Several other plaintiffs are proceeding anonymously.

The complaint raises eight claims, including First Amendment, equal protection and parental-rights violations against Kline, and California constitutional, education-code, privacy and negligence violations against the district. It alleges students were provided Muslim religious attire and encouraged to wear it, were given Qurans, observed a prayer service, and were photographed inside the mosque without informed parental consent for the images' later public use.

Students who attended dispute key allegations. Paly senior Brennan Bailey told The Campanile, the school's student newspaper, that Qurans were available on a table but not handed out. Senior Valu Mataele said wearing a hijab was voluntary: "They were very clear that we didn't have to."

Plaintiffs' attorney David Rosenberg-Wohl said the voluntariness defense misses the point: peer and teacher pressure are legally significant, and the trip encouraged devotional participation rather than objective study of religion. Jonathan Levav, a Stanford marketing professor and spouse of plaintiff Linor Levav, said framing hijab-wearing as a sign of respect put students in an impossible position, since declining would signal disrespect.

SJP teachers Caitlin Drewes, Marc Tolentino and Erin Angell, and Kline, declined to comment, citing district policy on pending litigation.

PAUSD spokesperson Lynette White, speaking for Superintendent Jason Glass, told The Campanile that no faith may be promoted or denigrated in the district and that the board will review its practices. Glass separately told Fox News Digital he was reviewing the allegations but would not comment further.

The Muslim Community Association told Fox News it was "deeply concerned" by the lawsuit, saying treating students' exposure to ordinary Muslim practice as coercive risks reinforcing the Islamophobia that education should overcome.

The lawsuit also cites CAIR-SFBA Executive Director Zahra Billoo, who spoke to students on the trip but is not a defendant. The complaint calls her a "controversial outside speaker" with "publicly documented hostile and discriminatory statements regarding Jews"; The Campanile reported she has faced controversy for statements on the Hamas-Israeli conflict, including defending Hamas's rocket fire at Israel. In a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, Billoo said she spoke to students about Islamophobia and civil rights work.

Paly Voice editor-in-chief Juni Thurston, an SJP student who missed the trip due to illness, published an Aug. 19 opinion piece in The Paly Voice disputing several lawsuit claims based on interviews with classmates who attended.

Adam Goldstein of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression told Fox News that compelling students to wear religious attire would violate the First Amendment's bar on compelled speech, comparing it to schools being barred from forcing students to pledge allegiance to the flag.

No hearing date has been set. The complaint alleges the mosque visits recur on a three-year cycle and predicts the next could happen by fall 2028.