Supreme Court sides with parents in Maryland dispute over LGBT pride storybooks in school

The Supreme Court on Friday sided with parents in a dispute about whether Maryland’s largest school district could force children to study LGBT storybooks without parental notification or the ability to opt out. 

The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, was brought by a diverse group of religious parents – including Muslims, Jews and Christians, who objected to Montgomery County Public Schools’ decision to force children as young as 3 to engage with LGBT books in its curriculum. The books included terms such as “drag queen,” “queer farmers,” “intersex flag” and “pride puppy,” and discussed “gender-neutral pronouns” such as ze/zir and ey/em.

The county’s education board initially notified parents of the books and allowed them to opt out their children, but it later rescinded the opt-out policy and said it could “not accommodate the growing number of opt out requests without causing significant disruptions to the classroom environment.” The parents sued, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, arguing that they had a religious right to direct their children’s upbringing, which is not surrendered “at the schoolhouse door.”

In a 6-3 decision, the justices sent the case back to the lower courts while ordering the school district to notify parents of the LGBT books and allow opt outs as the case unfolds.

“We have long recognized the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s majority opinion. “And this is not merely a right to teach religion in the confines of one’s own home. Rather, it extends to the choices that parents wish to make for their children outside the home.”

Alito noted the books are “unmistakably normative” and “clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.” For instance, he said, the books about same-sex marriage do not simply refer to it as an “existing practice” but rather as “a perspective that should be celebrated.” 

In response to the education board’s insistence that allowing parental opt-outs would be unworkable, “the Board’s concern is self-inflicted,” Alito wrote. “The Board is doubtless aware of the presence in Montgomery County of substantial religious communities whose members hold traditional views on marriage, sex, and gender. When it comes to instruction that would burden the religious exercise of parents, the Board cannot escape its obligations under the Free Exercise Clause by crafting a curriculum that is so burdensome that a substantial number of parents elect to opt-out.” 

Becket Senior Counsel Eric Baxter called the decision a “victory for parents’ rights to guide their children’s education,” noting on X the books “push one-sided ideology on gender and sexuality in violation of their religious beliefs.” The Lion has reached out to Montgomery County Public Schools for comment. 

The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices dissented and said the ruling will result in “chaos for this Nation’s public schools.”

Public schools offer all children a chance to live in a “multicultural society,” which is “critical to our Nation’s civic vitality,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted. “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.” 

Requiring schools to provide advance parental notice and a chance to opt-out of curriculum that “might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools,” she wrote. 

The ruling on the LGBT storybooks was one of several landmark cases – including on the use of nationwide injunctions and age verification for pornography use – the court decided on Friday, its final day of this term.