California Bill Authorizes Public Schools to Celebrate Muslim Holy Days in Curriculum

Additional optional or elective holidays for many state employees include Lunar New Year, Genocide Remembrance Day (April 24), Diwali, Juneteenth (June 19), and Native American Day (fourth Friday in September). These are not mandatory closures for all state offices, but state employees may take holiday credit in place of a personal holiday.

You will notice there are no official state Jewish holidays or Buddhist holidays.

Christians remain the largest religious group in California, with Pew reporting 55% of adults identifying as Christian, and Catholics form a large plurality within that. Muslims are a small minority – only 1%.

Preferential formal recognition plus curriculum celebration for one minority faith, while majority Christian cultural markers are often generically renamed, is not strict neutrality. It is selective accommodation. Similar optional recognition already exists or is expanding for other non-Christian observances (Diwali, Lunar New Year etc.). Pure consistency would either secularize all religious holidays uniformly or treat major faiths even-handedly without privileging celebration of one.

In a statement, Assemblyman Haney said:

“California is home to one of the largest and most vibrant Muslim communities in the country, and their traditions deserve recognition and respect. No student should have to choose between celebrating one of the holiest days of their faith and showing up to school, and no worker should feel they have to sacrifice their religious observance. AB 2017 is about making sure Muslim Californians are seen, valued, and treated with the same dignity as every other community in our state.”

Jews and Buddhists anyone?

“California has more than 500,000 Muslim residents, including students, educators, healthcare workers, engineers, small business owners, and public employees who help keep the state’s communities and economy running. Yet when Eid arrives each year, many Muslim students and workers must take extraordinary steps simply to observe one of the most sacred days of their faith.

“Students are forced to make the choice between observing one of the holiest days in their faith and missing classes, exams, or school events, while workers often feel pressure to use vacation days or request special permission to celebrate with their families.”

“Advocates say the bill would send an important message of inclusion and belonging at a time when Muslim communities continue to face discrimination and rising Islamophobia across the country.”

Christmas Day remains a federal holiday, and schools close nationwide around December 25. Thanksgiving—historically rooted in Christian tradition but now largely secularized—along with other civic holidays, continues to be observed.

While California Democrats expand recognition of religious holidays for Muslims and Hindus, they have also secularized and renamed school breaks that coincide with Christmas and Easter, now commonly called “Winter Break” and “Spring Break.”

The left has also challenged Good Friday as an official religious school holiday; it was discontinued as a national holiday by the U.S. government after 1978.

The California Family Council explains more about AB 2017:

California Family Council believes every student should be able to take time off for any religious holiday. That is not our objection here.

Our objection is to the state authorizing and promoting the celebration of specific religious holidays inside public school classrooms.

When CFC Vice President Greg Burt testified against AB 268 last year, he made this point directly: if you are teaching students to celebrate a religious holiday, that is not neutral. The state is not simply accommodating the beliefs of Muslim or Hindu families; it is directing public school teachers to lead exercises that acknowledge and celebrate the religious meaning of these observances. That is the government taking sides on religion, and it is constitutionally different from simply excusing a student’s absence.

The First Amendment prohibits government from endorsing or specially favoring one religion over others. Writing specific religious holidays into state law by name, authorizing school celebration exercises for their theological content, and commissioning State Board of Education curriculum guides to promote that content, while no comparable treatment has been extended to Christian or Jewish holidays, is the kind of selective government action that triggers Establishment Clause concern.

Read more here.

The Globe will continue to monitor this bill.