7,000 Children and Counting: An Analysis of Religious Exemptions from Compulsory School Attendance in Virginia

Virginia’s General Assembly, along with every other state legislature, has passed compulsory attendance laws requiring all school-age children to attend school, either in a public, private, parochial or approved homeschool setting. Like all 50 states, and as required by the United States Constitution and the Supreme Court, Virginia allows parents whose religious beliefs conflict with the idea of sending their children to public school to excuse their children from compulsory school attendance. Unique among the 50 states, however, is the fact that Virginia grants parents the ability to exempt their children from education altogether if they assert that their religious beliefs conflict with public school attendance. Indeed, once parents in Virginia are granted a religious exemption, they are no longer legally obligated to educate their children at all. 

Virginia’s unique approach to this issue might be of no more than academic interest were it not for the fact that, according to the most recent statistics provided to the Virginia Department of Education, in the 2010-2011 school year more than 7,000 children were exempted from compulsory attendance using this provision. 

"A school board shall excuse from attendance at school … Any pupil who, together with his parents, by reason of bona fide religious training or belief is conscientiously opposed to attendance at school. For purposes of this subdivision, "bona fide religious training or belief" does not include essentially political, sociological or philosophical views or a merely personal moral code…" – Virginia Code, §22.1-254 

While this does not necessarily mean that religiously exempted children are not receiving an education, it does mean that Virginia law contemplates and allows for this possibility.

This report examines this system. It first describes rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts regarding the required state-level accommodations for families whose religious beliefs may lead them to oppose compulsory school. The report then discusses how the 50 states have addressed the mandates of the Supreme Court. Narrowing in on the commonwealth, the report analyzes Virginia’s religious exemption statute and how it has been applied and interpreted by courts and the office of Virginia’s attorney general.

The report reaches the following conclusions: 

• Virginia is the only state in the nation that does not require any education for children receiving religious exemptions from compulsory school attendance, and more than 7,000 children a year may be currently subject to these exemptions.
• Local school divisions are frequently violating their legal obligations under Virginia’s religious exemption statute. 
• The religious exemption statute, both as written and applied, may violate Virginia's Constitution.
• Neither the U.S. Constitution nor the United States Supreme Court requires that states grant religiously motivated parents the authority to remove their children from school without any further educational obligations.
• Regardless of its positive intentions, a policy that currently permits more than 7,000 children to have unknown and unknowable educational opportunities should demand more careful examination by educators, families and policy makers.

In response to these potential concerns, the report proposes a range of questions for Virginia’s educators, policy makers and families to consider as they analyze the commonwealth’s current system of granting exemptions.