The Supreme Court upheld the religious freedom of Maryland parents who challenged a school district policy that prevented them from opting their children out of lessons involving LGBTQ+ books.
The court ruled, 6-3, that the Maryland parents were entitled to a preliminary injunction.
The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, involved Maryland parents of various faith backgrounds—Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim—asking the court for a temporary injunction, allowing them to opt their kids out of instruction that utilize LGBTQ+ books that Montgomery County Public Schools has mandated schools teach.
Although Maryland law requires schools to allow parents to opt their children out of “all sexuality instruction” and to provide advanced notice for such lessons, the policy excluded any opt-out right. The school district initially granted the opt-out but later revoked it, saying that too many parents requested to opt out and that the LGBTQ+ books are exempt from the law because they are taught as literature. The school district defended the policy as advancing the cause of inclusion.
Justice Samuel Alito delivered the Supreme Court’s opinion, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined. Thomas filed a concurring opinion, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined.
“Today, we hold that the parents have shown that they are entitled to a preliminary injunction,” Alito wrote. “A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill.”
“A government cannot condition the benefit of free public education on parents’ acceptance of such instruction,” he added.
“Many Americans, like the parents in this case, believe that biological sex reflects divine creation, that sex and gender are inseparable, and that children should be encouraged to accept their sex and to live
accordingly,” Alito noted. “But the challenged storybooks encourage children to adopt a contrary viewpoint.”
Sotomayor, however, warned that the notion of public schools offering “to children of all faiths and backgrounds an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society” will “become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs.”
“Exposing students to the ‘message’ that LGBTQ people exist, and that their loved ones may celebrate their marriages and life events, the majority says, is enough to trigger the most demanding form of judicial scrutiny,” she added.
“We similarly disagree with the dissent’s deliberately blinkered view that these storybooks and related instruction merely ‘expos[e] students to the ‘message’ that LGBTQ people exist’ and teach them to treat others with kindness,” Alito responded. “In making this argument, the dissent ignores what anyone who reads these books can readily see. It ignores the messages that the authors plainly intended to convey. And, what is perhaps most telling, it ignores the Board’s stated reasons for inserting these books into the curriculum and much of the instructions it gave to teachers.”
“Only by air-brushing the record can the dissent claim that the books and instruction are just about exposure and kindness,” he added.
Kelsey Reinhardt, president and CEO of CatholicVote, celebrated the ruling as a “major victory for religious parents and religious freedom across America.”
“For over two years, Catholic parents alongside parents of other faiths have been forced to defend their constitutional right to opt their pre-K-8th grade children out of radical LGBTQ+ course materials that contradict their own religious beliefs,” she added. “This right was violated by the Montgomery County Board of Education, which insisted on forcing explicit curriculum about gender ideology on children as young as 3 years old.”
“These books are, in fact, teaching explicit sexual orientation and gender identity issues as early as pre-K,” Will Haun, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, previously told The Daily Signal. The associated reading instructions, he said, “require teachers to make dismissive statements about a student’s religious beliefs, to shame children who disagree, and to teach as facts things that some would not agree are facts.”
The Pride storybooks include selections such as “My Rainbow,” which tells the story of a mother who creates a rainbow-colored wig for a child the book presents as “transgender.”
“Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope” recounts the tale of a biological girl who identifies as a boy and who struggles to convince the world that she is male.
“Prince & Knight” and “Love, Violet” tell same-sex romance stories.
During a Montgomery County school board meeting, board member Lynne Harris said, “Because saying that a kindergartener can’t be present when you read a book about a rainbow unicorn because it offends your religious rights or your family values or your core beliefs is just telling that kid, ‘Here’s another reason to hate another person.’”
Harris also insisted that “transgender, LGBTQ individuals are not an ideology, they’re a reality.”
