Religious-Freedom Laws Add to Schools' Complex Duties

Education Week: Adriel Arocha was a kindergartner with long braids in 2008 when his American Indian religious beliefs and those of his father, Kenney, ran smack into the grooming policy of the Needville, Texas, school system—and led to a federal court ruling centered on that state’s religious-freedom law.

The law, the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, is among the varied, but similarly named, statutes in 20 other states now under intense public scrutiny in the wake of controversies in Arkansas and Indiana over whether they would allow business owners to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation.

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