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No More Teacher's Dirty Looks: Skadden Wins School Fight

New York Lawyer
July 23, 2008

By David Bario
The American Lawyer

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The following report is one of several published in the July 2008 issue of The American Lawyer that look at some of the most intriguing and unusual pro bono cases handled by The Am Law 200.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom won a settlement in February for two Jewish families in rural Delaware whose local school district sponsored Christian prayers and allowed teachers to pass out Bibles in school. Skadden and the families are continuing to fight the district's practice of beginning school board meetings with prayer.

The Dobrich family (the identity of the other family is confidential) contacted the American Civil Liberties Union after a pastor speaking at their daughter's high school graduation invoked Jesus and school officials ignored their concerns about the sermon.

Skadden partner Thomas Allingham III, based in Wilmington, says he took the case after a friend and ACLU board member described the Dobriches’ situation in the fall of 2004.

Allingham soon uncovered a pattern of discrimination against non-Christians in the families' school district. He learned that teachers distributed Bibles to non-Christian students, urged them to embrace Christianity, and offered cake and other rewards to children who attended school-sponsored Bible clubs. "I didn't know much about the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, but I knew that it probably wasn't OK to pass out Bibles in school," Allingham says.

Following Skadden's investigation, the families sued the Indian River School District in early 2005. In 2006 a proposed settlement with the families was unanimously rejected by the Sussex County board of education at an open school board meeting, "with hundreds of members of the community sitting in the auditorium singing 'Onward, Christian Soldiers,'" Allingham says.

The settlement that was reached this year includes financial compensation to the families (the amount is confidential) and a commitment by the district to change its policies.

Allingham and a group of Skadden attorneys have spent more than 8,500 hours on the case. Allingham says he was surprised by the community's reaction to the families' suit. The Dobriches faced so much harassment -- including anti-Semitic taunts and veiled threats at an August 2004 school board meeting that drew record turnout -- that they ultimately left the county, moving two hours away.

Says Allingham: "The notion that people would threaten others over this, or that so many people believe that the Constitution should be ignored if a majority thinks it should — that made me feel pretty naive."