The Satanic Temple’s Protect Children Project (PCP) has secured a religious accommodation for a student at Elizabeth High School in Elizabeth, Colorado, exempting her from the school’s Minga bathroom monitoring system.
The student and her family initially asked the district for a religious exemption, arguing that the school’s bathroom access rules conflicted with her sincerely held religious beliefs as a member of The Satanic Temple (TST). When that request was denied, they turned to the Protect Children Project, which defends student TST members against school policies that burden their religious practices, including corporal punishment, restraint, seclusion, and bathroom access restrictions.
At the center of the dispute was Minga, a digital hall pass system used to monitor student movement during the school day, including bathroom access. For this student, the policy conflicted with her religious beliefs, including TST’s Third Tenet: “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.”
The Protect Children Project challenged the district’s refusal to accommodate the student’s beliefs. In a letter to the district, TST legal counsel Matt Kezhaya argued that the school’s bathroom monitoring system and restrictions on bathroom access burdened the student’s religious exercise by placing school authority over her bodily autonomy. The letter also cited Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling involving parents who challenged a public school district’s refusal to allow students to opt out of instruction they said conflicted with their religious beliefs. As Kezhaya wrote, “By its very nature, the system requires [the student] to subordinate her bodily needs to institutional surveillance and control.”
The district ultimately granted the religious accommodation last Tuesday. Under it, the student is exempt from Minga for bathroom access and will use a laminated physical pass instead of the digital system.
Defending student TST members from school policies that burden their religious beliefs is central to Protect Children Project’s mission. The religious accommodation in Elizabeth, Colorado, demonstrates that commitment in action. These events also serve as a reminder that when the Supreme Court recognizes a religious protection, as it did in Mahmoud v. Taylor, public institutions cannot limit those protections to majority or politically favorable religious groups.
Click here to learn more about TST's Protect Children Project.
