Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli (R) voted Tuesday to repeal Oregon’s long-standing law prohibiting public school teachers from wearing religious clothing in the classroom, but not before expressing a common concern. He predicted that Native American teachers would show up for work wearing pelts, that Muslim women would give math lessons while wearing burqas, and even that members of the Aryan Nations would coach the basketball team while wearing swastikas.
Such concerns are overblown to the bursting point, as Ferrioli must know — otherwise, he shouldn’t have supported repeal legislation. Forty-seven other states already allow public school teachers to wear the traditional or required dress of their religious faiths, and none of these states is having problems with teachers wearing loincloths or wizard costumes. House Bill 3686 is a modest and overdue nod to the diversity of religious belief and practice in the United States. The bill passed the Senate by a 21-9 vote, and Gov. Ted Kulongoski should sign it.
Oregon’s ban on religious garb in the classroom has a pedigree that counts in favor of repeal. Approved in 1923, it was promoted by the Ku Klux Klan to keep Catholic nuns from getting jobs as teachers. The law has survived until now because of a well-founded desire to maintain religious neutrality in public schools, the idea being that an authority figure wearing identifiably religious clothing or symbols unavoidably would communicate to schoolchildren a message favoring one religion over others or none.
HB 3686, however, does not allow teachers to proselytize for their own faith or to denigrate others’ faith or lack of it. It won’t allow preaching, rituals or bonfires in the classroom.
The issue is less one of religious liberty, guaranteed by the Constitution, than of discrimination in the workplace, where employers are required to treat people fairly. Under HB 3686, public schools will be required to make “reasonable accommodation” of teachers’ religious beliefs as they relate to clothing. Schools are not required to make such accommodations if they result in difficulties or expense in maintaining an atmosphere of religious neutrality.
As a practical matter, teachers will avoid any display of religious faith that causes a distraction. And if any teacher’s clothing does create a continuing distraction, school officials will be able to respond on the basis that an accommodation creates an undue hardship. The requirement that schools’ respect for religious garb be reasonable, not absolute, can be expected to mean head scarves yes, burqas no; yarmulkes yes, swastikas no; turbans yes, loincloths no.
The ban on religious clothing requires teachers to hide part of who they are. In cases where faith mandates certain articles of clothing, qualified teachers are excluded from careers in public education.
Teachers, like students, come from all traditions. Oregon law shouldn’t pretend otherwise.
