While Alamance County’s commissioners have given their swift approval to a policy to give local library patrons advance notice about potentially inappropriate content in library materials, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case that centers on whether mandatory elementary school story times violate the religious beliefs of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish parents (see related story, this edition).
The U.S. Supreme Court is apparently leaning toward siding with the plaintiffs who filed suit against the Montgomery County board of education over a requirement that elementary students participate in reading exercises that feature what the plaintiffs say are age-inappropriate content and celebrate LGBTQ sexuality. The plaintiffs contend that the school board has refused to let them opt-out their young children from hearing/reading books with LGBTQ themes.
The U.S. Constitution provides that parents shall have the right to direct their children’s upbringing.
The central question in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, is whether the Montgomery County, Maryland school board’s mandatory policy infringes on parents’ religious exercise by compelling elementary school students to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality that goes against their parents’ religious convictions, without any requirement for parental consent or an opportunity to opt out, according to a transcript of the April 22 hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Unlike Maryland, 38 U.S. states, including the District of Columbia, provide the opportunity for parents to opt-out their children from instruction on sexuality and gender instruction, according to the Becket Fund, which is representing the plaintiffs.
Under a policy implemented in 2022, the Montgomery County school board requires elementary school teachers to read storybooks to their students that celebrate gender transitions, gay Pride parades, and same-sex playground romance. The storybooks were selected “to disrupt cisnormativity,” i.e., the belief that there are two biological sexes, determined at birth, and “either/or thinking among students” according to case background from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Montgomery County school board originally provided an option to opt-out, but later reversed that decision, saying “no opt-outs would be permitted and that parents would not even be notified when the storybooks were read,” according to the Supreme Court. Montgomery County schools introduced the reading of LGBTQ-friendly books into its language arts curriculum for pre-K through fifth grade students, multiple media outlets have reported.
For an example, one of the books at issue in the case, Pride Puppy, tells the story of a puppy that gets lost during a Pride parade,” according to a description from the publisher.
The school system’s attorney argued last week that the opt-out policy was discontinued because it had become to difficult to administer. The Montgomery County school board argues that accepting the argument that the lack of an opt-out provision “imposes a burden on their religious beliefs would leave public education in shreds by entitling parents to pick and choose which aspects of the curriculum will be taught to their students.
In his opening argument, the attorney for the parents, Eric Baxter, told the justices: “Parents everywhere care about how their young children are taught sexuality and gender identity. That’s why nearly every public school in the country that provides sexuality education requires parental consent first. But Montgomery County is an extreme outlier, insisting that every elementary school student
must be instructed that, among other controversial matters, doctors guessed at their sex when they were born and that anyone who disagrees is hurtful and unfair. Forcing Petitioners to submit their children to such instruction violates their religious beliefs and directly interferes with their ability to direct the religious upbringing of their children.”
The conservative justices on the Supreme Court appeared last week to question earlier rulings that the instruction does not compel students to violate their religious beliefs and seemed to side with the parents’ request for an opt-out provision.
