On September 11, 2003, two teachers at the Franklin Science Academy in Muskogee, Oklahoma, were discussing the terrorist attacks that had occurred exactly two years earlier, when they spotted a sixth grader, Nashala Hearn, wearing a Muslim headscarf.
The school’s dress code prohibited students from wearing “hats, caps, bandanas, plastic caps, or hoods on jackets inside the building.” One of the teachers sent Nashala to the principal, who warned and later suspended the eleven-year-old when she continued to wear the scarf. The school attorney said, “You treat religious items the same as you would any other item, no better or worse. Our dress code prohibits headgear, period.” The school was willing to articulate the Establishment Clause argument against its initial antagonist, the Rutherford Institute, a Christian civil liberties foundation that assisted the Hearns in filing their complaint in a federal court.
When the US Justice Department intervened by filing additional briefs against the school in the spring of 2004, however, the school quickly caved in.
Under a settlement agreement, the school agreed to change the dress code so as to include an accommodation, or exception, for religious headgear (hijab). The school also paid an undisclosed sum of monetary damages to the Hearn family. In response, Assistant Attorney General Alexander Acosta issued a public statement that “This settlement reaffirms the principle that public schools cannot require students to check their faith at the schoolhouse door.”
