Family achieves policy change to permit religious community service
Client(s) Kay, Benjamin
Jones Day recently helped Benjamin and Margery Kay reach a favorable policy change protecting their children's freedom to complete state-mandated service hours by volunteering at their synagogue. Maryland requires students complete 75 "service-learning" (SSL) hours to graduate from high school. Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) allows students to start doing these hours in middle school. One of the Kays' children volunteered as a teacher's aid for an extracurricular education program run by the family's synagogue. She did the same sort of tasks that meet Maryland's seven best practices for SSL hours and have been credited in other, secular, settings. However, her school denied her hours due to the religious setting and nature of the program, citing Establishment Clause concerns under U.S. Supreme Court precedent that was abandoned long ago. In partnership with Pepperdine's Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation Religious Liberty Clinic, Jones Day challenged this policy in federal court. Relying on the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, 582 U.S. 462 (2017), Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, 591 U.S. 464 (2020), and Carson v. Makin, 596 U.S. 767 (2022), Jones Day argued that excluding the Kays' SSL hours solely because of their religious setting and topics violated core First Amendment principles. In response to the lawsuit, MCPS changed this policy and retroactively credited the Kays's SSL hours, and on October 31, 2025, the Kays voluntarily dismissed their case. Now, students in Maryland will receive credit for SSL hours that take place with a faith-based organization or in a religious setting, as long as they meet the same requirements as all other SSL hours.
Kay et al. v. Wright et al., No. 25-2071 (D. Md.)
