The Supreme Court gave the parental rights movement a win Friday by siding with Maryland parents seeking to have their public school children sit out of lessons using certain classroom materials — like books with gay characters — based on religious objections.
In their 6-3 decision, the conservative justices said that the parents would be “likely to succeed in their challenge,” which would have far-reaching implications for religious- and parental-rights disputes in public schools nationwide. The case brought by the parents was being cheered on by high-profile conservatives, including 66 Republican lawmakers who filed an amicus brief in support of their cause.
Conservatives are already hailing the decision as a victory for the U.S.’s parental rights movement. The court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor is likely to lead to similar outcomes in other challenges about public education.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon was among the first to celebrate the court’s opinion on X.
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“The Court rightfully held that schools can’t shut parents out or disregard their religious obligations to their children,” she wrote. “A great day for parents and education champions!”
When the court listened to arguments in late April, conservative justices seemed sympathetic to the group of Maryland County parents, led by Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat, who made the case that the inclusion of books featuring LGBTQ+ characters in elementary schools’ language arts curricula violated their parental rights and burdened their religious expression. The court ultimately sided with the parents in their opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito.
“The Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt-outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion,” Alito wrote. “Today, we hold that the parents have shown that they are entitled to a preliminary injunction.”
The school district added children’s books like “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” and “Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope” to its supplemental curriculum in 2022. Teachers were not required to assign the books or use them in instruction, but they had to notify parents before the books were used in a classroom. They also had to accommodate parents’ requests for their children to opt out.
But the parents filed suit after the school district discontinued that initial opt-out policy in March 2023. The school district made the case to the Supreme Court that it ended the policy because of concerns about “high student absenteeism and the infeasibility” of accommodating a “growing number of opt-out requests” districtwide.
It also cited “the risk of exposing students who believe the storybooks represent them and their families to social stigma and isolation,” which the school district reasoned could “risk putting MCPS out of compliance with nondiscrimination laws.”
Meanwhile, counsel representing the parents relied heavily on the landmark case Wisconsin v. Yoder, where the court decided in 1972 that Amish families could choose not to send their children to school after the eighth grade.
Eric Baxter, who represented the parents, argued to the court that taking away the ability to opt out would violate the parents’ religious rights, as established in Yoder. He made the case that elementary school children are too young “to discern sometimes between truth and error, to weigh what their parents are saying versus what their teachers are saying.”
“We have a situation that’s even more egregious than in Yoder, where you have children of an extremely young age being indoctrinated in a topic that’s known to be sensitive,” he argued.
The court’s conservative majority seemed to line up behind that argument.
“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,” Alito wrote, citing Yoder.
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Emily Kennard is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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