Howard County lawsuit focuses on exclusion of Catholic school students

A federal lawsuit that supporters say aims to bring justice to Catholic school students in Howard County is headed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals this fall.

Maryland state law allows children to vote for a student member of the county school board. The practice, which gives public school children in grades six through 12 the ability to elect a public school student in grade 11 or 12 to the board, occurs in counties across the state.

That includes Howard County, where headlines were made when the student member’s vote gridlocked the eight-member board and prevented the reopening of schools during the coronavirus pandemic. 

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm focused on election integrity, is suing Howard County on behalf of two parents – one a former Catholic school parent – alleging a violation of both the First and Fourteenth amendments.

“We brought a case under the First Amendment, which basically says you can’t penalize people politically for their religious choices,” said J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. “We’re alleging that the parents of the Catholic schoolchildren, and the Catholic schoolchildren themselves, are being discriminated against in violation of federal law because they are not allowed to vote for this student school board member, only public schoolchildren are.”

Adams, a former Justice Department Voting Section lawyer and current commissioner on the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights, said that despite some Catholic school students’ reliance on services from the school board, most importantly transportation and bus services, they are excluded from involvement.

It is an issue that is rooted in history and sits at the very core of the foundation of the United States, Adams said. For centuries, he said, Catholics were prohibited from civic participation in the United Kingdom.

“It’s the same kind of thing where only a particularly chosen, favored group is given political power and the Catholics are excluded,” Adams said. “That’s why the founders had the First Amendment. “The arguments of Howard County to defend this policy would allow them to choose favorites, and that’s bad for the country.”

The issue caught the attention of Lisa Kim, a politically active and connected citizen who has served as a city council member in Prince George’s County, even before her son was a student at a Catholic school.

“I was hyper-aware of what was going on because I knew that the student member of the board was the deciding vote in keeping the schools closed during and after COVID,” she said, adding that Howard County was one of the last school districts in the state to reopen. “You’ve got a child who is making this decision – they have no knowledge of life, of how these decisions affect people.”

Kim heard that there was a federal lawsuit in the works and volunteered to help the cause. It is an issue, she said, that is “wrong on every level.”

She became a plaintiff in the case when her son was attending middle school at St. Louis in Clarksville. He transferred there during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the Archdiocese of Baltimore made significant efforts to reopen for in-person learning.

Once a student of a Catholic school, Kim realized that even if the student member was to remain part of the board, it meant her son – along with the other Catholic, private and homeschooled students – did not get a voice.

“Then it occurred to me,” Kim said. “This is an elected body paid for by taxpayers – why doesn’t my kid get a say? “The more I got involved and aware, the more unfair and downright against the law it all appears to be. … It’s exclusionary of children in Catholic schools.”

That exclusion of Catholic students sends a message, Adams said.

“There’s a general sense that on a lot of issues, Catholics are being marginalized,” he said. “All the same arguments that Howard County uses to support this – children deserve a voice, it’s good political practice to get kids involved early – would apply equally to Catholic schoolchildren.”

It is an ironic situation, Adams said, considering Maryland’s history as a place founded for Catholics to worship freely.

“If there’s one place it shouldn’t be happening, it’s in Maryland,” he said.

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