Montgomery County councilman, George Levanthal, asked local schools to shut down for two Muslim holidays: Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha, the Huffington Post reports.
“The schools close all the time. The schools close for parental guidance, the schools close for teacher training,” Leventhal told The Washington Examiner [1]. “I just don’t think it’s that much of an inconvenience to close the schools, and I do believe observant Muslims are entitled to the same courtesy extended for years to Christians and Jews.”
But according to Gazette.net [2], school systems in Maryland cannot make the final decision on whether to close schools simply for religious holidays. Attorney Rochelle Eisenberg, of Towson-based Pessin Katz Law, P.A., specializes in education and employment law and says that school systems have to abide by the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause which prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”