Two Jewish teenagers and their families and a non-Jewish teen and his family had to move out of the School District of Philadelphia, which enrolls nearly 200,000 students in 331 schools, after the three boys faced backlash for entering a “quiet room,” which the Academy at Palumbo turned out to reserve exclusively for Muslim students to pray, according to a federal lawsuit.

The public school violated First Amendment rights in two ways, according to Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of The Deborah Project. The alleged “Muslim-only prayer room” discriminates against non-Muslim students, and the school used Jewish prayers that the boys recited in the room as “a basis for disciplinary action and justification for claiming harassment of Muslim girls,” she told JNS.

“It’s a stunning, insane

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