Officials with the Chicago public school system have agreed to pay $2.6 million to end a lawsuit challenging the use of Transcendental Meditation (TM) in schools.
The Chicago Board of Education had entered into an agreement with the David Lynch Foundation to hire meditation instructors who worked with children in the schools. The suit alleged that while TM was presented as non-religious, students were urged to chant the names of Hindu deities and take part in an initiation ritual that involved honoring Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a Hindu guru who founded the TM movement in 1955.
Several students challenged the program. They were represented by John Mauck of the Chicago-based law firm Mauck & Baker.
Under the terms of the settlement, the Chicago schools and the Lynch Foundation will make payments to 773 students who attended eight schools that participated in the TM program, reported the ABA Journal. Neither the Chicago schools nor the Lynch Foundation has admitted liability.
The Lynch Foundation, founded by the late filmmaker David Lynch, has been promoting TM in public schools and other government institutions for years, often with the backing of celebrities and musicians. But courts have recognized that the use of TM in public schools is problematic. In the 1979 case Malnak v. Yogi, Americans United joined with other organizations to challenge the use of TM in New Jersey schools. A federal court ruled that the instruction was unconstitutional.