FREMONT, CA, February 8, 2017 (CAPEEM): California Parents for the Equalization of Educational Materials (CAPEEM), a Hindu-American advocacy organization, and three community members filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court this morning against public school officials at the California Department of Education, State Board of Education, and several school districts throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. The case challenges the discriminatory treatment of Hinduism in California’s history-social science curriculum and the official endorsement of other religions, based upon the U.S. Constitution.
The curriculum framework adopted by the State Board of Education last summer devotes almost half the discussion of Hinduism to the caste system, which it portrays as a supposed Hindu religious belief. For every other religion, the SBE followed its policy of refusing negative examples that would instill prejudice — there is no mention of negative interpretations of Christianity that supported slavery or condemned same-sex relationships.
The Complaint alleges numerous other ways the California curriculum treats Hinduism unfairly and differently from all other religions. Every faith except Hinduism is taught from the perspective of the believer, using the characters, narrative and values of the religion’s teachings. Hinduism is not described with characters and stories and is barely acknowledged as a religion at all.
The complaint can be downloaded here: http://capeem.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=afd767393db532690a3a636a5&id=a1b9463951&e=6e315cbb3d.