Mar 15, 2020 3 min read

On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission announced 24 additional sites that will be commemorated with the distinctive markers we see along streets and roads in nearly every corner of the commonwealth. It’s a fascinating and diverse list.

Muhammad Ali’s onetime training camp in Schuylkill County is getting a marker, as is the Pittsburgh site where horror film maestro George Romero once worked, the church in Allentown where the Liberty Bell was kept during the Revolutionary War and Laurel Hill State Park in Somerset County, which was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the New Deal era.

A marker will also be placed in Cambria County recognizing the Hysong vs. Gallitzin School District case in 1894. What was that? It allowed religious clothing to be worn by teachers in public schools. The ruling stood in opposition to the anti-Catholic fervor that was prevalent in many parts of the country, and would give nuns the freedom to wear habits in the classroom. Unfortunately, the Pennsylvania Legislature stepped in the following year, approved a so-called “garb law” forbidding public school teachers from wearing religious clothing, and it’s been on the books ever since.

Pennsylvania’s statute served as a model for other states, and garb laws once dotted the map. Almost all of them have been repealed, with lawmakers belatedly realizing they are discriminatory.

There’s only one state left that still has a garb law in effect. Which one?

Yep, you guessed it. Pennsylvania.

In the same way that the commonwealth stubbornly refuses to revamp its archaic approach to alcohol sales, Pennsylvania is the only state that officially forbids nuns to wear habits in public classrooms, or Sikh men to wear turbans or Muslim women to wear hijabs. It’s rarely enforced, but it’s still the law of the commonwealth.

It shouldn’t be.

A 2011 effort to repeal it stalled in Harrisburg. Three years later, the garb law allowed a man who led an organization called Jesus Was Not a Jew Ministries to complain about a teacher wearing a Star of David pendant in a district near Harrisburg. Cranks and bigots can harass teachers whose religious beliefs they don’t like because this law is still around.

Eugene DePasquale, Pennsylvania’s auditor general, led the effort to rescind the law when he was a state representative almost a decade ago, and he remarked back then, “It’s one thing to say during algebra class that I think you should all be Christian, but we’re not talking about this. If you’re Jewish and wear the Jewish star to class, that’s just a sign of your faith. Many of us believe it’s a violation of our First Amendment rights.”

Of course, a public classroom is not a pulpit, but a teacher simply wearing traditional garb associated with their faith is not preaching. It’s time Pennsylvania recognized that difference.