The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case about whether public schools must give parents of elementary schoolchildren a chance to opt out of instruction on gender and sexuality that they say goes against their religious convictions.
The case stems from a challenge by a group of parents in Maryland’s largest school system, who objected to Montgomery County Public Schools prohibiting parents from taking their children out of lessons that used storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters and themes.
Parents, who are Muslim, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox, filed suit in 2023, saying the policy violates their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion.
The case puts the high court at the center of a contentious national debate over how to teach and treat gender and sexuality in schools, which has spurred fights over books, bathroom use and on which teams transgender athletes should be allowed to play.
Eric Baxter, an attorney for the families, said in a statement that the school system’s decision to disallow opt-outs was “cramming down controversial gender ideology” to 3-year-old pupils. Becket, a public interest institute that pushes for religious liberty, is representing the families, and has been involved in other cases on LGBTQ+ issues.
“The Court must make clear: Parents, not the state, should be the ones deciding how and when to introduce their children to sensitive issues about gender and sexuality,” Baxter said.
Montgomery County schools declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. But the district wrote in filings to the high court that an adverse ruling could upend long-standing legal precedent that guides how schools teach.
“Petitioners seek to unsettle a decades-old consensus that parents who choose to send their children to public school are not deprived of their right to freely exercise their religion simply because their children are exposed to curricular materials the parents find offensive,” attorneys for the schools wrote.
During the 2022-2023 school year, Montgomery County schools introduced a reading list of books that included LGBTQ+ characters as part of an effort to be more inclusive to its diverse student population. The lists were intended for students from prekindergarten to 12th grade and were created with parental feedback.
The school system required teachers to read at least one storybook a year from a group of titles that included “Pride Puppy,” which is about a gay pride parade; “Intersection Allies,” which is about a group of children discussing their differences; and “Love, Violet,” which is about a girl who has feelings for a female classmate.
“The storybooks are not used in any lessons related to gender and sexuality,” the school district wrote in its filing. “Nor is any student asked or expected to change his or her views about his or her own, or any other student’s, sexual orientation or gender identity. Instead, the books are made available for individual reading, classroom read-alouds, and other educational activities designed to foster and enhance literacy skills.”
The parents wrote in court documents that the Montgomery school board also issued guidance that instructed teachers to emphasize that “not everyone is a boy or girl” and that some “people identify with both, sometimes one more than the other and sometimes neither.”
As teachers started using the books in the classroom, some families wanted to opt their children out of the discussions due to concerns that the lessons and subsequent discussions would conflict with their religious views. The books that targeted elementary-aged students were particularly controversial.
Originally, some principals let families pull their children out of the classroom when the books were read. But in March 2023, the school system’s central office announced that opt-outs would not be permitted.
More than 1,100 parents signed a petition asking the district to restore the opt-out right and hundreds protested the decision. Maryland is one of 47 states and the District of Columbia that have opt-out or opt-in provisions for sex education in schools, according to the parents’ filing.
In May 2023, a group of parents filed a lawsuit against the school system, alleging that the district violated their First Amendment rights and that the decision went against a district policy that allows for religious accommodations. The parents are not asking the school system to drop the curriculum.
Other parents did not support opting out of the curriculum.
After the lawsuit was filed, the school system quietly stopped teaching two of the books referenced in the lawsuit because of concerns that it would “require teachers to explicitly teach vocabulary terms outside of the context of the lesson,” according to a district database.
The parents who sued the district asked a federal judge in Maryland for a preliminary injunction to restore the opt-out provision, but the judge denied the request, ruling the parents were unlikely to succeed because they could not show “that the no-opt-out policy burdens their religious exercise.”
That ruling was upheld by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, before the parents petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case. Oral arguments in the case will be scheduled later.
Mark Eckstein, a Montgomery County schools parent and LGBTQ+ advocate, said he wasn’t surprised the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, given that discussions around gender and sexuality have roiled school communities across the country.
“I strongly believe that the district court ruled correctly, and I’m hoping there will be a vigorous defense of the wisdom of that decision and MCPS’s policy,” he said.
Montgomery is one of a number of school districts where controversy has flared over books dealing with sexuality and gender. In 2023, a Georgia teacher was fired after she read a book about gender conformity to her fifth-grade class. She sued.
A group of parents in Dearborn, Michigan, sued the school district in 2022, seeking to remove books from school libraries they felt had inappropriate sexual content. Hundreds of mostly Muslim parents also protested at a school board meeting.
The effort was part of a broader push to pull some books from schools and libraries. The American Library Association found more than 4,200 book titles were targeted for removal from schools in libraries in 2023, greatly outpacing the 2,500 targeted the year before. Almost 50 percent of the titles dealt with gay and minority themes.
The Supreme Court has moved in recent terms to expand religion in education and the rights of the religious.
In 2o22, a divided court ruled that Washington state discriminated against a football coach who prayed at midfield after a high school football game. The same year, the high court ruled Maine could not exclude religious schools from a voucher program that provides public assistance for education.
Last year, the high court ruled that the constitution’s free speech provisions shield some businesses from being required to provide services to same-sex couples, after a web designer argued she should not have to do such work because of her religious beliefs.
===============================================
Justin Jouvenal covers the Supreme Court. He previously covered policing and the courts locally and nationally. He joined The Post in 2009. follow on X@jjouvenal
Nicole Asbury is a local reporter for The Washington Post covering education and K-12 schools in Maryland.follow on X@NicoleAsbury
Scottie's Playtime 