Three California families are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a Ninth Circuit ruling that let state-funded charter schools reject homeschool materials solely because they contain religious content.

The families, John and Breanna Woolard, Hector and Diana Gonzales, and Carrie Dodson, filed a petition for certiorari last week through First Liberty Institute and the law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and King & Spalding. The case, Woolard v. Thurmond, challenges a California policy that bars religious educational materials from publicly funded independent study programs, even when those materials meet the state's own academic standards. The petition names California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and officials at two charter schools, Blue Ridge Academy and Visions in Education, as respondents, The Christian Post reported.

At stake is whether a state can offer families broad curriculum flexibility through a public program and then strip that flexibility away the moment a parent reaches for a Bible-based textbook. The families say the answer is no, and that the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause forbids it.

A grammar sentence about God was too much for the charter school

The petition lays out specific examples of the kind of material California's charter schools refused to accept. Schools overseeing the families' independent study programs rejected works by William Penn and Jonathan Edwards, foundational figures in American history, because of their "religious content." One school turned away a grammar exercise built around the sentence "God sends the rain to help plants grow." The school's stated reason, as quoted in the petition: it "can't accept any work sample with any religious wording on it."

The families also sought to use curricula such as "Focus on Fives," published by Bob Jones University, and a program called "The Good and the Beautiful." Both were denied. The parents were not asking the state to teach religion. They were educating their own children, in their own homes, using materials they selected, and the charter school's independent study program gave every other family that same freedom.

Every family except the ones whose materials mentioned God.

California's charter schools pointed to two legal provisions as justification. Article 9, Section 8 of the state constitution, a descendant of the nineteenth-century Blaine Amendments that targeted Catholic schools, declares that "no public money shall ever be appropriated for the support of any sectarian or denominational school." State Education Code Section 47605(e)(1) adds that "a charter school shall be nonsectarian in its programs." Together, the schools argued, these provisions required them to exclude any religious content from the independent study curriculum.

But the families' attorneys contend that these provisions, applied this way, amount to straightforward religious discrimination. The independent study programs function, in substance, as private homeschooling rather than traditional public education. Parents choose their own curricula, teach in their own homes, and submit work samples for credit. The state provides funding and flexibility, then draws a line at faith.

Obama appointee wrote the Ninth Circuit opinion that sided with the state

The families first filed suit in October 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. The district court ruled against them. They appealed to the Ninth Circuit, where a three-judge panel, Judges Andrew D. Hurwitz, Eric Miller, and Jennifer Sung, unanimously upheld the lower court's decision in September 2025.

Judge Hurwitz, an Obama appointee, authored the panel opinion. He acknowledged that the charter schools gave parents "great flexibility to choose which pre-existing curricula to use to educate their children, or to create their own." But he concluded that "with that flexibility comes substantial legal constraints not applicable to private schools," and that those constraints made the programs "sufficiently public to defeat Plaintiffs' free exercise claim."

Hurwitz also cited the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Carson v. Makin, which held that the Free Exercise Clause does not prohibit a state from providing "a strictly secular education in its public schools." The Ninth Circuit read that language as a green light for California's policy, a reading the families and their lawyers say turns the ruling on its head.

In Carson v. Makin, the Supreme Court struck down a Maine policy that excluded religious schools from a tuition-assistance program. The core holding was that states cannot bar families from using public benefits at religious institutions simply because those institutions are religious. The families in Woolard argue the same principle applies here: California cannot offer a curriculum benefit to all homeschooling families and then yank it from parents who choose religious materials. The Washington Examiner noted that the petition frames the state's exclusion as "an open-and-shut Free Exercise violation."

The families petitioned the full Ninth Circuit for en banc rehearing after the panel ruling. The court denied that petition. Alexander Kazam, co-counsel at King & Spalding, said at the time:

"We are hopeful that the full Court will grant rehearing and come to the right decision, restoring protection for bedrock First Amendment principles."

That hope now rests with the Supreme Court.

First Liberty says parents are being "punished" for choosing faith-based materials

Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel at First Liberty Institute, framed the case in blunt terms. He characterized the lower court decisions as having wrongfully justified what he called "the state's religious discrimination."

Sasser told Fox News:

"Parents should not be punished for choosing quality religious curriculum meeting the state's standard that they teach to their own children in their own home just because it's religious."

John Woolard, the lead petitioner, has described the charter school's requirements as "very burdensome" to his family. The Woolards enrolled their children in Blue Ridge Academy's independent study program expecting the same curriculum flexibility the school advertised, only to discover that faith-based content triggered automatic rejection. The school's parent-student handbook explicitly required work samples to be "non-sectarian/non-religious."

The broader legal landscape has been shifting in favor of religious liberty claims in recent years. The Justice Department recently strengthened its religious liberty guidance with new parental rights protections, signaling that the federal government takes these disputes seriously.

And the Woolard case is not the only religious liberty petition heading to the high court. A Liberty University student has separately petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn a decades-old ban on public financial aid for religious studies majors, another case testing whether states can single out religious activity for exclusion from generally available public benefits.

Supreme Court could decide whether to take the case this fall

The justices are scheduled to resume their closed-door conferences on September 28, when they begin sorting through petitions that accumulated over the summer recess. The new term opens October 5. A decision on whether to grant certiorari in Woolard v. Thurmond could come as early as this fall.

If the Court takes the case, it will confront a question the Ninth Circuit sidestepped: whether a state can classify a home-based, parent-directed educational program as "public" for purposes of stripping religious content, while simultaneously marketing that program's flexibility as its chief selling point. The families argue the state wants it both ways, the control of a public school without the constitutional obligations that come with restricting parental choice.

The case also tests the reach of the Blaine Amendments, state constitutional provisions rooted in nineteenth-century anti-Catholic sentiment that barred public funds from "sectarian" institutions. The Supreme Court has viewed these provisions with increasing skepticism. In Carson v. Makin and in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer before it, the Court held that states cannot weaponize these provisions to exclude religious organizations from public benefit programs. California's charter school policy leans on exactly that kind of provision.

Courts in other contexts have grappled with similar tensions between public funding and religious expression. A Massachusetts court recently blocked religious statues from a public building, citing that state's constitution, another example of how state-level provisions continue to be used to push religious expression out of publicly connected spaces.

None of the named defendants, Thurmond, the school district superintendents, or the charter school officials, have publicly responded to the Supreme Court petition. The silence is notable. California built a program that lets parents pick nearly any curriculum on the shelf, then told a handful of families that the one category they cannot choose is the category that includes their faith. The state has yet to explain why that distinction survives the Free Exercise Clause.

When a government program offers every family the same benefit and then takes it away from the families who pray, the Constitution has a word for that. The Supreme Court has a chance to say it.