Justices back parents on LGBTQ+ opt-out in schools

Maryland parents challenging their local school board’s introduction of “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks into their children’s curriculum are entitled to injunctive relief because they are likely to prevail on their claims that the board’s denial of requested “opt outs” violated their constitutional right to freedom of religion, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 in reversing a decision from the 4th Circuit.

Click here to read the full text of the June 27 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor.

BULLET POINTS: “We acknowledge that ‘courts are not school boards or legislatures, and are ill-equipped to determine the “necessity” of discrete aspects of a State’s program of compulsory education.’ It must be emphasized that 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.’ We express no view on the educational value of the Board’s proposed curriculum, other than to state that it places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ religious exercise if it is imposed with no opportunity for opt outs. Providing such an opportunity would give the parents no substantive control over the curriculum itself.”
— Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., opinion of the court

“The Board’s ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum and no-optout policy pursue the kind of ideological conformity that Pierce [v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925)] and [Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205 (1972)] prohibit. To be sure, the Board frames its policy in more veiled terms. It has maintained throughout this litigation that the storybooks serve broad interests in ‘promot[ing] equity, respect, and civility among [its] diverse community’; ‘normaliz[ing] a fully inclusive environment’; ‘encourag[ing] respect for all’; and creating a ‘safe educational environment.’…

“But, the Board’s response to parents’ unsuccessful attempts to opt their children out of the storybook curriculum conveys that parents’ religious views are not welcome in the ‘fully inclusive environment’ that the Board purports to foster. As the majority recounts, the Board ignored that ‘“thousands” of parents felt “deeply dismayed and betrayed” by the rescission of opt outs from “content that conflict[s] with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”’ After parents attempted to opt their children out of the Board’s new curriculum on religious grounds, at least one Board member suggested that students were ‘parroting’ their parents’ ‘dogma.’ The Board member further analogized the parents to ‘white supremacists’ and ‘xenophobes.’ And, a different Board member suggested that any objection to the LGBTQ+-inclusive’ curriculum stemmed from ‘ignorance and hate.’ In the Board’s view, for parents to suggest that the storybooks were inappropriate would be ‘a dehumanizing form of erasure.’ At a minimum, these statements suggest that ‘being accepting’ has limits — and that parents’ sincerely held religious beliefs fall beyond them.”
— Justice Clarence Thomas, concurring

“Public schools, this Court has said, are ‘at once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting our common destiny.’ They offer to children of all faiths and backgrounds an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society. That experience is critical to our Nation’s civic vitality. Yet it will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs.

“Today’s ruling ushers in that new reality. Casting aside longstanding precedent, 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. 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. That novel rule is squarely foreclosed by our precedent and offers no limiting principle. Given the great diversity of religious beliefs in this country, countless interactions that occur every day in public schools might expose children to messages that conflict with a parent’s religious beliefs. If that is sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny, then little is not.

“The result will be chaos for this Nation’s public schools. Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools. The harm will not be borne by educators alone: Children will suffer too. Classroom disruptions and absences may well inflict long-lasting harm on students’ learning and development.

“Worse yet, the majority closes its eyes to the inevitable chilling effects of its ruling. Many school districts, and particularly the most resource strapped, cannot afford to engage in costly litigation over opt-out rights or to divert resources to tracking and managing student absences. Schools may instead censor their curricula, stripping material that risks generating religious objections. The Court’s ruling, in effect, thus hands a subset of parents the right to veto curricular choices long left to locally elected school boards. Because I cannot countenance the Court’s contortion of our precedent and the untold harms that will follow, I dissent.”
— Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissenting