Supreme Court Reasserts Parental Right’s Over Sexualized Books

By Chriss Street

Mountain Top times

Maryland’s Montgomery County Schools approved several story time books with

LGBTQ characters for use in public school classrooms, without giving parents the right

to have their K-6 th grade children opt-out for religious beliefs in 2023.

The schools at first notified parents before the books would be used, and

accommodated requests to have their children excused.

But in March 2023, the School District changed the policy because of high student

absenteeism, the administrative burden of too many opt-outs, and the risk of students

who believe the storybooks represent them to social stigma and isolation.

Parents sued and the lower court and the court of appeals ruled against the parents,

because the opt-out requests were supposedly not religious based. Led by a Muslim

and a Christian family, the parents appealed under the title Mahmoud v. Taylor to the

U.S. Supreme Court.

School administrators and their leftist allies thought that the parents would fail, and the

appeal would finally set a U.S. Constitutional bar against parental opt-out rights.

Below is the question presented by the parents’ lawyers to the High Court:

Do public schools burden parents religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents

religious convictions and without notice or opportunity to opt out?

In a shocking turn-of-events during Supreme Court oral arguments, all six of the

Republican appointed Justices energetically sided with the parents and indicated that

the Montgomery County school district violated the U.S. Constitution, and will command

the school do more to protect parents who object to LGBT books on religious grounds.

Mahmoud as a result, seems destined to become a national precedent in favor of the

right for parents to object on religious grounds to sexualized books.

Parental lawyer Eric Baxter argued that parents who object to any form of classroom

instruction on religious grounds must be notified in advance about that instruction and

be permitted to opt their child out of the class.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor complained that the direction of the Court could lead to

parents having the right to object to curriculum touching on topics like divorce, interfaith

couples, and “immodest dress.”

Justice Sotomayor warned that religious beliefs could shield children from topics such

as evolution, pacifism, magic, women achieving things outside of the home, and “false

views of death.”

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito suggested the parent lawyer’s argument regarding

sexuality would especially apply to very young students.

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch brought up an alleged statement by a Mongomery

School Board member that is showed animosity against certain religious beliefs.

Commented that the parents claimed a school board member compared parents who

object to LGBTQ-inclusive literature to “white supremacists” and “xenophobes.” 

Name calling by the School Board matters, because in Masterpiece Cakeshop v.

Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a baker

who refused to bake wedding cakes for same-sex couples, because a Colorado Civil

Rights Commissioner made similarly disparaging comments about the baker.

Democrat political figures before their disastrous oral arguments, had derisively referred

to the parents’ lower court losses as the “Just Say No to Gay” case.

The three Democrat appointed Justices: Sotomayor, and Justices Elena Kagan and

Ketanji Brown Jackson tried to focus on “line-drawing” problems presented by the case.

Justice Kagan said she understood how even non-religious parents might object to

“young kids” being taught “on matters concerning sexuality,” but claimed there was no

historic basis for the Supreme Court to limit claims by parents who want to micro-

manage a school’s lesson plans.

Justice Jackson claimed ruling in favor of parents could be used to bar a gay teacher

from displaying a picture of their own wedding, or prevent a teacher from referring to a

transgender child by that child’s preferred pronouns in the presence of other students.

Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh responded that he is “mystified as a longtime

resident of Montgomery County that this case exists, because the Supreme Court said

in Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery (1988), the First Amendment only prohibits

government actions “to coerce individuals into acting contrary to their religious beliefs.”

Conservative Justice Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to think that

exposing young people to books with gay characters is “noxious.”

Chief Justice Roberts argued that it would be “dangerous” to expose kindergarten-age

children to lessons their parents might object to, because that might cause those

children to question whether they should obey their teacher or their parent.

Based on oral argument on Tuesday, it sounds like parents are back in control of their

children’s public school education.