Former Students Get $2.6 Million Payout in Damages for Forced Transcendental Meditation Participation
Contact: Tom Ciesielka, 312.422.1333, tc@tcpr.net
(August 21, 2025 – Chicago) On August 21, 2025, 207 former Chicago Public School high school students will begin to receive payments in a court ordered settlement for being forced to participate in Transcendental Meditation during class. The Chicago Board of Education and the New York based David Lynch Foundation must pay lead plaintiff Kaya Hudgins $100,000 for violating her rights, and up to $10,000 to each former student who joined her in the class action suit.
In May 2025, Judge Matthew Kennelly of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved the class action suit settlement, in which the Chicago Board of Education and the David Lynch Foundation are required to pay $2.6 million dollars to the former high school students.
Attorney John Mauck, partner at Mauck & Baker, noted that Hudgins’ rights, and those of the other students were completely disregarded by the Chicago Board of Education. This was done in an illegal effort to force a religious belief system upon them against their will. In many cases, the students were coerced to practice a worldview that was in conflict with their own faith.
“As part of their in-school curriculum,” Mauck explained, “the students were either required to participate in Transcendental Meditation or were deprived daily of a half hour of academic opportunity and made to maintain silence while their classmates focused their minds on secret mantras.”
Hudgins, now 22 years-old, related how at the age of 16 she was made to take part in the program called “Quiet Time.” Her involvement was mandated regardless of any objections she may have had to the activities it incorporated. She shared how despite its innocuous title, the mandatory sessions included an uncomfortably private one-on-one Hindu “Puja” worship ceremony in a darkened room, chanting, religious paraphernalia, and secret mantras which were actually the names of Hindu gods.
This case illustrates what Mauck labels “an egregious trend” by public schools and education authorities to force political agendas on students with neither their consent nor that of their parents.
Mauck offered up the recent United States Supreme Court Mahmoud v. Taylor decision as evidence.
“In Mahmoud v. Taylor, a school district was refusing to let parents opt their children out of lessons incorporating LGBTQ+ themes and literature,” Mauck detailed, “The high court ruled that the school district was out of line to deny parents their First Amendment religious rights.”
“In the case of Kaya and her peers,” added Mauck, “the schools had students sign nondisclosure agreements. Several students shared how they and their classmates were instructed not to tell anyone, including their parents, about the program – detailing how they were particularly warned by a David Lynch Foundation representative not to tell their parents if their family was ‘religious.’”
With the Supreme Court clearly upholding First Amendment religious rights over public education agendas, Mauck believes that class actions suits can be a tool to protect parents and students whose faith is being attacked at school in the name of inclusivity, ideological agendas, or spiritual indoctrination.”
Mauck further observed, “School administrators cannot run roughshod over Constitutionally guaranteed rights in order to force acceptance of ideologies that are in perceived conflict with the religious beliefs of parents and students. The teaching of Simian ancestry (humans are descended from apes) will be the next fallacy to be challenged in the public schools.”
Mauck concluded, “We hope that the Chicago Board of Education has learned that indoctrination doesn’t pay – unless you’re the victim. And there are multiple victims here – not just the students whose religious rights were violated, but parents who were deliberately deceived, teachers whose integrity was put on the line, and the communities which were negatively impacted by school overreach. The tide is turning. If schools continue this type of behavior, there will be more consequences, including financial. We hope this settlement will deter those who exploit young people, and that it will encourage school administrations to be wary of harming students by allowing wolves to prey on the sheep they are obligated to protect.”
Read more about the lawsuit and the settlement order approved on May 5, 2025, by District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly of the United States District Court – Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, awarding $2,600,000 settlement to former Chicago Public Schools student Kaya Hudgens and others included in the class action lawsuit, Kaya Hudgins v. Board of Education of the City of Chicago et al., here [https://mauckbaker.com/awardintm/].
About Mauck & Baker, LLC
Mauck & Baker, established in Chicago in 2001, is nationally known for its practice in the area of religious liberty. It works with individuals, religious institutions, and businesses. For more information, please visit mauckbaker.com.
