‘Secret mantras’: Settlement being paid to students forced to hear Transcendental Meditation beliefs

A settlement of millions of dollars now is being paid to 207 former high school students in the Chicago Public Schools system – for being required to participate in the district’s Transcendental Mediation program and being forced to hear those religious beliefs during class.

The damages total about $2.6 million and were announced in a statement from John Mauck, a lawyer with Mauck & Baker.

“As part of their in-school curriculum, the students were either required to participate in Transcendental Meditation or were deprived daily of a half hour of academic opportunity and made to maintain silence while their classmates focused their minds on secret mantras,” the lawyer explained.

The court-approved settlement allows compensation for those students being forced to practice a worldview that was in conflict with their own faith.

“The settlement requires the Chicago Board of Education and the New York-based David Lynch Foundation to pay lead plaintiff Kaya Hudgins $100,000, while the remaining students in the class-action suit will each receive up to $9,500,” the legal team confirmed.

Just weeks ago, in May, Judge Matthew Kennelly of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved the class action suit settlement.

Mauck noted that Hudgins’ rights, and those of the other students, were completely disregarded by the school district.

His report said, “This was done in an illegal effort to force a religious belief system upon them against their will.”

Hudgins now 22, confirmed how at the age of 16 she was forced into “Quiet Time,” a program to which she was not allowed to object.

“She shared how despite its innocuous title, the mandatory sessions included an uncomfortably private one-on-one Hindu ‘Puja’ worship ceremony in a darkened room, chanting, religious paraphernalia, and secret mantras which were actually the names of Hindu gods,” the report said.

It’s part of what Mauck has warned is an “egregious trend” by public schools and education authorities to force agendas, religious or political, on students with neither their consent nor that of their parents.

He cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, where the justices emphasized parental rights in their children’s education.

“In Mahmoud v. Taylor, a school district was refusing to let parents opt their children out of lessons incorporating LGBTQ+ themes and literature,” Mauck detailed, “The high court ruled that the school district was out of line to deny parents their First Amendment religious rights.”

“In the case of Kaya and her peers,” added Mauck, “the schools had students sign nondisclosure agreements. Several students shared how they and their classmates were instructed not to tell anyone, including their parents, about the program – detailing how they were particularly warned by a David Lynch Foundation representative not to tell their parents if their family was ‘‘religious.’”

The result should be noted by other schools, Mauck said.

“School administrators cannot run roughshod over constitutionally guaranteed rights in order to force acceptance of ideologies that are in perceived conflict with the religious beliefs of parents and students. The teaching of Simian ancestry (humans are descended from apes) will be the next fallacy to be challenged in the public schools.”

Mauck continued, “We hope that the Chicago Board of Education has learned that indoctrination doesn’t pay – unless you’re the victim. And there are multiple victims here – not just the students whose religious rights were violated, but parents who were deliberately deceived, teachers whose integrity was put on the line, and the communities which were negatively impacted by school overreach.”