The Oregon state house speaker said this week that he would ask the legislature in February to repeal a statute that was originally crafted by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court against a Sikh teacher in the 1980s and expanded within a new law passed this month.

Governor Ted Kulongoski signed into law on July 16 the Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act - Senate Bill 786 - that requires employers to allow workers to wear religious apparel and take holy days off, but explicitly exempts teachers from wearing religious garb.

“We all agree, and Speaker Hunt is strong on the issue that we are going to seek a repeal of the (teacher exemption) law,” said Geoff Sugerman, spokesman for Speaker Dave Hunt, D-Clackamas County.

Hunt met with about 20 members of religious communities, including a Sikh man from Portland, on Tuesday, July 21, to allay their anger over the teacher exemption. “There was broad agreement to move forward to seeking to change that portion of the law, Sugerman said.”

Rajdeep Singh Jolly, law and policy director at the Washington-based Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, also attended the meeting by phone.

SALDEF was aware of the long-standing teacher-garb law in Oregon from legal-academic literature, and issued an advisory in the spring, he said. But when he found out about the new bill, he was initially encouraged.

“I thought to myself that if they pass WRFA, it would have implications on the garb law, and maybe they will have gotten rid of it,” he said. “(Instead) they explicitly made a carve out for the garb law.”

SALDEF sent a letter to the governor on July 14 asking him to veto the bill out of principle and to send it back to the legislature to remove the teacher exemption.

“We don’t oppose WRFA, the problem is that it is a bit ironic to include a Ku Klux Klan statute into a religious freedom act,” Rajdeep Singh said. “I heard that the exemption was left in because of political compromise, but our problem is that there should not have been a compromise on a Ku Klux Klan law.”

Governor Kulongoski did not respond to the letter.

Vetoing the bill would not have impacted the existing teacher statute, said Rem Nivens, spokesman for the governor. The rest of the bill effectively protects most workers, so he signed it into law. But the governor would be willing to look at a new bill repealing the teacher garb law if it came to his desk, he added.

Hunt is expected to ask for a repeal in February during a special one-month session. If the exemption were not repealed, he would have to wait until 2011 for the next full legislative session and try again.

KILL BILL

When the original legislation on religious accommodation in the workplace – House Bill 3539 - was first introduced in 2007, it did not include the teacher exemption.

“There was a strong feeling that because of a more recent law, it would trump (the older teacher) law,” Sugerman said. The teacher exemption law – ORS 342.50 – that bans teachers from wearing religious clothing was initiated by the Klan in the 1920. Oregon and Pennsylvania are the only two states that still have a teacher garb law.

The probability that the old law might get trumped became an issue with the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, which supports strict separation of church and state, and has historically worried about teachers proselytizing students.

“They were instrumental in having the (teacher) language added back in,” Sugerman said, referring to ACLU Executive Director David Fidanque and Legislative Director Andrea Meyer.

Meyer initially denied any ACLU involvement: “I don’t remember what tripped it up in ’07; the provision to prohibit (teachers) was not in discussion.” But Meyer did remember that the ACLU filed a statement to the Oregon Supreme Court in 1986 asking it to uphold the firing of a Sikh teacher. Karta Kaur Khalsa, formerly known as Janet Cooper, became a Sikh in 1983 and began showing up to her classes dressed in white, and wearing a dastaar. The court upheld her firing.

In light of Sugerman pointing to the ACLU’s heavy lobbying to include the teacher exemption in 2007, Meyer said in a second brief interview, “I do not recall” what happened, but warned that the ACLU would fight any attempt to repeal the teacher exemption.

The ACLU had convinced enough legislators in 2007 that the bill would probably have failed without the teacher garb language. To get enough votes, perhaps it was “best not to pick too many battles,” said Steven Green, a law professor at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., who also advised Hunt on the bill.

“Speaker Hunt does not approve (but) we decided not to deal with the public teacher issue at this time,” he said. “Because of the teacher statute, the sense was that it would be another constituency that would come to the table.”

The political compromise in the House did not help the bill in the Senate. It was killed there by influence of the big business lobby.

The bill was again introduced this year with the teacher exemption statute expanded to include protection for any school district, education service district and public charter school that may fire a teacher for wearing religious garb. The new language, which is being added for all laws regarding schools, effectively strengthens the teacher exemption statute.

The bill had no opposition from the ACLU this time, but faced “some serious opposition from the business community” and “strong opposition from House Republicans,” Sugerman said. But with a new political environment, a new legislature and with the chief sponsor becoming the speaker, the bill passed both houses.

The arguments were not as sharp, understood, or well-tailored in 2007 as they were now, said Gregory Hamilton, president of the Northwest Religious Liberty Association, a lobbying group from Washington state. It convinced enough big business and legislators that the law would lower equal employment claims and litigation, and benefit all religious communities, he said.

REPEAL

The teacher garb statute would have again gone under the public radar if Sikh, Muslim and Jewish groups had not noticed it just days before the governor signed it. SALDEF alerted the media, and a flurry of news stories were published locally and nationally.

“We are all distressed about it,” Sugerman said, about the media frenzy. The result was the Tuesday meeting between Hunt and religious groups. Hunt would not have sought a repeal without their intervention, he said.

Legislators will have to be convinced that the teacher statute is not constitutionally required,” said Green, who also attended the Tuesday meeting. The Oregon Supreme Court said it is constitutional to have the teacher law if the legislature wants it, but the constitution does not require it.

The teacher statute is a “very blunt instrument,” he added. It’s easy for school principles and administrators to say that clothing or a crucifix are too prominent. It’s harder to police religious references uttered in the classroom.

It would be easy to just repeal the statute, Green added. “Chances pretty good.” He hoped it would be repealed in the short legislative session in February. Otherwise, the issue would loose its resiliency if it had to wait for the full legislative session in 2011.

“This issue affects all human beings, someone who believes in civil rights and religious freedom, this is all of us against the ghost of the KKK,” said SALDEF’s Rajdeep Singh. “It shouldn’t be so hard to have all Oregon lawmakers unanimously agree to dispose in five or 10 min this statute, and put behind them a very ugly history.”



Note: By Anju Kaur
Sikh News Network staff journalist
anjukaur@sikhnn.com
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