Bogan High School Basketball Player Faced Implied Threats of Pray or Don’t Play
Contact: Tom Ciesielka, 312.422.1333, tc@tcpr.net
(November7, 2023 – Chicago) A former Chicago Public School student was awarded $150,000 by the Clerk of Court from the Northern District of Illinois on October 23, 2023. The monies were a judgment agreed to by the defendants in response to Mariyah Green’s assertion of Constitutional violations of her rights by the Board of Education of the City of Chicago and the David Lynch Foundation, over mandated participation in Hindu rituals while attending a Chicago Public School. Mariyah Green was represented by the Chicago-based law firm of Mauck & Baker in her efforts to hold educators and program developers responsible for requiring participation in a disingenuously promoted program that violated her Christian beliefs.
John Mauck, a partner at Mauck & Baker, detailed how the offending program, named Quiet Time, was a thinly veiled Hinduistic religious program encompassing the practice of Transcendental Meditation. According to the Complaint, Green and other students participating in that portion of the program were required to engage in a Puja initiation rite. This ceremony includes statements recognizing the power possessed by various Hindu deities and invitations to those same deities to channel their powers through those present. The Puja participators were asked to make obeisance in various ways to a number of the Hindu deities.
“Mariyah Green’s Christian faith and her dedication to Jesus Christ makes worship of others, such as these idols, unthinkable,” Mauck explained. “Therefore, on the second day of this training in Transcendental Meditation, Mariyah told the instructor that her knee was injured in order to avoid kneeling before the image of a man in a photograph on a table in the middle of the room, that she described as looking like Buddha.”
“Spiritual meditation was terrible beneath its masks,” recalled Green. “I am happy that the legal system allowed a judgment totaling $150,000 to be issued against the Lynch Foundation and the Chicago Board of Education, in what I consider to be an implicit admission that forcing Hindu worship on me caused me harm. I am sorry that Chicago Public Schools did not publicly challenge the Lynch Foundation or the University of Chicago for their involvement in forcing Hinduism on me and about two thousand other pupils.”
Green’s Complaint stated that Bogan High School students who did not want to participate in the Quiet Time program were warned that their failure to participate could impact their grades and disqualify them from participating in their respective graduation ceremonies. Green was told that her grades – and thus her eligibility to play basketball – would be negatively affected if she did not participate in the Quiet Time program.
As Green had transferred to Bogan specifically for its basketball program, she knew she had to get good grades to remain on the team. Green felt that she was forced to participate in Quiet Time each day as she was told that cooperation during the Quiet Time would count towards her grades, and she did not want to be kicked off the basketball team for poor academics.
“This was an egregious abuse of Mariyah’s religious rights,” stated Mauck. “The innocuously labeled Quiet Time was developed by the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in conjunction with the University of Chicago – both of whom profited from its implementation in Chicago Public Schools. Throughout its design and conduct, these institutions were all aware of the religious content of the Transcendental Meditation sessions, the like of which had already been removed from public schools elsewhere due to Constitutional violations.”
“We appreciate,” added Mauck, “that our legal system allowed for the recognition of the critical Constitutional issues at stake here. Mariyah Green’s concerns have been justified, her voice has been heard, and the offending parties have paid $150,000.”
Read the Notification of Docket Entry made October 23, 2023, by the Clerk of the United States District Court – Northern District of Illinois recording the Judgment awarded to Mariyah Green in the amount of $75,000 from the Board of Education of the City of Chicago and $75,000 from the David Lynch Foundation in the lawsuit argued by Mauck & Baker attorneys on behalf of Mariyah Green, in Mariyah Green et al. v. Board of Education City of Chicago et al. here.
Read the original complaint in Mariyah Green et al. v. Board of Education City of Chicago et al. as filed on February 2, 2023, by Mauck and Baker attorneys on behalf of Mariyan Green in United States District Court – Northern District of Illinois – Eastern Division here.
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.
Revised on November 9, 2023
