Supreme Court hands win to parents opposed to LGBTQ books in schools

Parents should be allowed to opt young children out of curriculum that violates their religious beliefs, the US Supreme Court says.

‘Pride Puppy,’ one of the books at the center of the Supreme Court case.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of Maryland parents who want to be able to opt their elementary-school children out of instruction that includes storybooks on gay relationships, transgender identity and other LGBTQ themes.

In a 6-3 decision on Friday, the court said the public-school system in Montgomery County, Md., had placed “an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion,” according to the majority opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito.

“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,” he wrote in the opinion, joined by the other conservative justices.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, warning of “chaos” in public education. “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,” she wrote.

The case set up a clash between parents’ ability to direct their children’s education and schools’ authority over classroom material. Teachers might now have to make more extensive accommodations for families with certain religious views and could be more inclined to skip some topics altogether.

Parents historically haven’t enjoyed a broad right to opt their children out of school curriculum, although most states make exemptions for sex education.

In 2022, the Montgomery County schools, a large suburban district outside of Washington, DC, added a collection of books with LGBTQ themes and characters to classrooms. Teachers could choose to read them aloud in class.

US President Donald Trump said the ruling was a win. Picture: AFP

One of the picture books, titled “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” is about a girl who learns that her favorite uncle is marrying another man. Another book, “Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope,” tells the story of a 5-year-old child who identifies as transgender and is accepted by his family.

The board said in a court filing that it added these books to its curriculum to “reflect the diversity” of the county’s families.

Some parents from several religious backgrounds—Muslim, Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox—objected to these books. The school board said in court filings that it initially tried to accommodate opt-out requests, but doing so became “unworkably disruptive” due to “unsustainably high numbers of absent students.”

A group of parents sued, arguing that compelling their children to participate in the instruction went against their religious convictions and violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.

The parents said they weren’t asking to block the material, but rather for the option to pull their children out of instruction featuring content they found objectionable.

“New government-imposed orthodoxy about what children are ‘supposed’ to think about gender and sexuality is not a constitutional basis to sideline a child’s own parents,” argued the parents, who were represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a conservative legal nonprofit.

The suit was backed by conservative parents’ rights groups, and the Trump administration also argued in favor of the parents at the Supreme Court.

Some school associations and liberal groups countered that allowing broad opt-out rights would be burdensome for educators and has no basis in the Constitution.

A federal judge ruled in favor of the school board in 2023, finding that the parents weren’t entitled to an injunction because they “have not shown that the no-opt-out policy likely will result in the indoctrination of their children.” An appeals court upheld that decision.

Wall Street Journal