ABSTRACT
The interdisciplinary scholarship on regulating public schoolteachers’ religious garb in the United States is vast for the mere fact that this legal problem spans 125 years and has affected, at some point, schools in twenty-two US states. More than 150 legal journals, books, casebooks, and commentaries have dedicated sections to analyzing laws and regulations that ban educators from wearing religious garb while teaching in public schools. Denominational publications not only reveal what is at stake for various religious communities but also show the historical tensions between Protestant and Catholics. They also demonstrate that the political problem of teachers’ religious garb predated the first anti-religious-garb case in 1894. This chapter examines the evolution and treatment of state anti-religious-garb laws and subsequent rulings on them in state courts, starting in 1894. The contemporary anti-religious-garb cases, from 1986 to today, alternatively, were entrenched in the conflicts between the federal judicial and legislative branches of government.
