Supreme Court Lets Parents Opt Kids Out Of LGBTQ Books In Schools

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Topline

The Supreme Court cleared the way Friday for parents to broadly object to content in schools that they find objectionable on religious grounds, a ruling that centers on books with LGBTQ themes—but critics warned could "radically change" what public schools teach.

Protesters in support of LGBTQ+ rights and against book bans demonstrate outside of the Supreme ... More Court Building on April 22 in Washington, DC.

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Key Facts

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along party lines in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a dispute over the school district in Montgomery County, Maryland, and its decision not to let parents opt their children out of being exposed to children’s books with LGBTQ themes, on the basis of it conflicting with their religion.

The court granted an injunction that allows the parents to opt their children out of the books as the case moves forward, ruling the parents are likely to ultimately prevail in the case.

The school district added several books with LGBTQ themes—like about a child attending their uncle’s same-sex wedding, and a dog getting lost at a Pride parade—as part of a broader mission to diversify their instructional materials, and while the district initially let parents opt their children out of reading the materials, it later changed the policy after the slew of children opting out became “unworkable.”

Parents—who are Muslim, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox—sued the district, claiming the inability to opt their kids out of being exposed to the books violated their First Amendment right to freedom of religious expression and forced them to “surrender their right to direct the religious upbringing of their children.”

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court, said the parents’ religious liberties were likely violated, arguing the 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,” and governments “cannot condition the benefit of free public education on parents’ acceptance of such instruction.”

The court’s liberal justices dissented from the decision, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing the court’s ruling “will be chaos for public schools,” and while public schools “offer to children of all faiths and backgrounds an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society, that experience “will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs.”

Chief Critic

“Today’s ruling threatens the very essence of public education. The Court, in effect, constitutionalizes a parental veto power over curricular choices long left to the democratic process and local administrators,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, which liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. “That decision guts our free exercise precedent and strikes at the core premise of public schools: that children may come together to learn not the teachings of a particular faith, but a range of concepts and views that reflect our entire society. Exposure to new ideas has always been a vital part of that project, until now.”

What Does This Ruling Mean For Schools?

While the case centers on books with LGBTQ themes, teachers and school administrators argued in briefs to the Supreme Court that the ruling could have far more widespread effects and force “radical change” in public education by letting parents object to any content they could find objectionable. That could result in everything from objections to the “Harry Potter” books to protests against schools celebrating Halloween, education groups argued, also noting it could present tricky issues like censoring classroom discussions or barring students with same-sex parents from giving presentations about their families. Sotomayor acknowledged those possible impacts in her dissent Friday, arguing the “logic of the Court’s ruling will also apply to countless other topics, interactions, and activities that may conflict with a parent’s religious preferences.” “The majority’s new rule will have serious chilling effects on public school curricula,” Sotomayor wrote, predicting schools will “strip” their curricula of anything that could be objectionable—like “teaching on evolution, the work of female scientist Marie Curie, or the history of vaccines”—rather than risk costly litigation. The court’s majority, for its part, downplayed any broader impacts their ruling could have, writing the decision is more narrow than critics claim because the books at issue here don’t just expose children to LGBTQ themes, but “unmistakably convey a particular viewpoint about same-sex marriage and gender.” The Montgomery school board also “has specifically encouraged teachers to reinforce this viewpoint and to reprimand any children who disagree,” the majority claimed, which also bolsters the parents’ case.

Tangent

The dispute over Montgomery County’s policies comes as a number of states have already passed laws regarding children’s instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, and parents’ rights to object to it. Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law—known as “Don’t Say Gay”—was the most controversial when it was enacted in 2022, but similar laws restricting such instruction or giving parents the right to opt out of it have also been enacted in Arkansas, Montana and New Hampshire. Texas also allows parents to opt children out of any “objectionable” content, while Arizona, Tennessee and Wyoming require parents to instead “opt-in” to any instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Key Background

The parents suing Montgomery County went to the Supreme Court after both lower district and appeals court judges sided with the school district, shutting down the plaintiffs’ efforts to opt their children out of the LGBTQ-themed books. The dispute over the district’s policies comes as recent culture wars have caused upheaval when it comes to public education, as objections by parents and GOP lawmakers to instruction on topics like LGBTQ issues have sparked book bans and laws like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay.” Advocacy group PEN America has tallied nearly 16,000 book bans since 2021, a number the group says is higher than any period since McCarthyism in the 1950s. More than 10,000 book bans took place during the 2023-2024 school year alone, the highest year on record. The Trump administration, which filed a brief in the Montgomery County case urging justices to side with the parents, has also sought broad changes, seeking to dismantle the Department of Education as President Donald Trump has more broadly taken aim at LGBTQ rights and diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Some Democratic-led states have also passed measures in response to the new attacks on books and public school instruction, with states including California and Illinois passing laws that outlaw book bans.