In a major ruling on Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with parents in a case involving religious freedom and public education.
The justices held that a group of Maryland parents can opt their children out of curriculum they say violates their religious beliefs while their lawsuit against the school district continues. The ruling broke 6-3 along the court’s ideological lines.
The high court’s opinion comes amid ongoing clashes over cultural issues and parental rights and, more broadly, the fundamental purpose of American public schools. In this case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, the conservative majority decided that the Montgomery County Board of Education infringed on parents’ First Amendment rights by preventing them from withdrawing their children from instruction involving LGBTQ-themed books.
Why We Wrote This
In a closely watched case about religious freedom and public education, the Supreme Court sided with parents who wanted to opt their children out of LGBTQ-themed materials.
The group of Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox parents who filed the lawsuit argue the board’s policy violates their right to exercise their religion freely. In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said that they are likely to succeed with their claims.
The Supreme Court has “long recognized the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children,’” he wrote. “And we have held that those rights are violated by government policies that ‘substantially interfer[e] with the religious development’ of children.”
The decision is a step in the right direction, says Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute.
“It’s better than not allowing opt-outs, in terms of freedom,” he says. Now, “at least if you think something’s being imposed on your kids in violation of your religion, you can remove them from that lesson.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, disagreeing with the notion that the decision simply upholds high court precedent. The ruling, she wrote, will have a much broader impact.
“The Court invents a constitutional right to avoid exposure to ‘subtle’ themes ‘contrary to the religious principles’ that parents wish to instill in their children,” she added. “The result will be chaos for this Nation’s public schools.”
Justin Driver, a Yale Law School professor who co-authored a brief in support of the school board, agrees.
This decision “succeeds in opening Pandora’s box in countless classrooms located in our nation’s public schools,” he said in an email. “It unwisely grants parents and students the authority to, in effect, veto individual school lessons and assignments, thereby wreaking educational havoc.”
Parents right and a controversial curriculum
The curriculum at issue in the case is a selection of “LGBTQ+-inclusive” picture books to be taught for students from kindergarten through fifth grade. The books have titles such as “Pride Puppy,” “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” and “Intersection Allies,” which address gender and sexuality.
The stories are about “a family attending a Pride parade, a niece meeting her uncle’s husband-to-be, a prince falling in love with a knight as they battle a dragon in a mythical kingdom, a girl feeling nervous about giving a valentine to her crush, and a transgender boy sharing his gender identity with his family,” according to a legal filing by the Montgomery County Board of Education and superintendent.
The school board argues that the books, which were approved for English language arts instruction in elementary schools, align with its attempts to better represent the diversity of students and families. Montgomery County Public Schools, the largest district in Maryland, serves just shy of 160,000 students outside of Washington, D.C., and is one of the most religiously diverse places in the country.
The school district said the books aren’t used in any lessons about gender or sexuality. “Nor is any student asked or expected to change his or her views about his or her own, or any other student’s, sexual orientation or gender,” their brief states.
Parents from diverse faith backgrounds, however, want to be able to pull their children from any instruction using the books. In the majority opinion, Justice Alito said they have that right. The books at issue, he wrote, “clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.”
The board’s policy, he noted, “encourages teachers to correct children and accuse them of being ‘hurtful’ when they express a degree of religious confusion.”
“What the parents seek here is not the right to micromanage the public school curriculum, but rather to have their children opt out of a particular educational requirement that burdens their well-established right ‘to direct “the religious upbringing” of their children,’” he concluded.
Unlimited opt-outs?
Countering that assertion, the court’s three liberal justices voiced concerns about the slippery slope the ruling may create. Does it tee up an avalanche of lawsuits demanding faith-based opt-outs from other coursework, from evolution to women’s roles in society?
“Never, in the context of public schools or elsewhere, has this Court held that mere exposure to concepts inconsistent with one’s religious beliefs could give rise to a First Amendment claim,” says Justice Sotomayor in her dissent.
The majority opinion creates “a very amorphous standard,” says Ira Lupu, a professor emeritus at George Washington University Law School who co-signed an amicus brief in support of the school board.
The opinion made “no attempt” to limit its holding to LGBTQ+ issues, he adds.
That, he suggests, upends precedent that parents could not object simply to their children’s exposure to ideas their parents disagree with. “This has been the law for 40 years. … If it’s only exposure, and not compelled affirmation of some kind, then your religious freedom is not undermined.”
In a press call shortly after the opinion came down, Grace Morrison, a Montgomery County mother of a child with Down syndrome, called the ruling a triumph for families.
“Given [my daughter’s] learning challenges, she struggles to grasp why her parents and teachers might disagree,” says Ms. Morrison. “Unfortunately, we had to remove her from the school to protect her from that confusion, a sacrifice that no parent should be forced to make.”
A chilling effect is also likely, says Mr. McCluskey from the Cato Institute.
“What I expect we’ll continue to see is that if a public school serves a population that has a lot of disagreement about topics, they’ll tend to avoid topics that are controversial.”
