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A group of Montgomery County parents gather outside MCPS Board of Education to protest classrooms having LGBTQ+ books in them.
Arguments are scheduled next week for Mahmoud v. Taylor, which could further roll back students' rights to information.
The U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear a case that could allow parents to control even what their kids read in school for fun.
Arguments are scheduled next week for Mahmoud v. Taylor, which could further roll back students' rights to education and information by allowing their guardians to pull them out of lessons that they don't approve of. In this case, parents don't want their children in the same rooms as LGBTQ+ picture books that aren't even used in lessons.
Related:The LGBTQ+ Supreme Court cases to watch this term
Mahmoud v. Taylor, previously Mahmoud v. McKnight, is a pending Supreme Court case brought by a group of religious parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, who are seeking the power to opt their children out of lessons that include books with LGBTQ+ themes.
The named plaintiff is Tamer Mahmoud, a Muslim parent with three children in the district, but several other parents are involved. The named defendant is Thomas W. Taylor, the Montgomery County superintendent of schools.
Parents from various religious faiths — Muslim, Roman Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox, and others — sued Montgomery County Public Schools after the district ended its policy allowing them to opt-out of lessons they objected to in 2023. The group claims that exposing their children to such material violated their religious freedom and parental rights.
The parents are represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a conservative group legal group that has played a role in several cases challenging LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, including the 2014 case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., in which the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that for-profit corporations are exempt from regulations that go against their owners' religious beliefs, and Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization, the 6-3 ruling in 2022 that overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
Eric Baxter, senior counsel at Becket, has accused Montgomery County Public Schools of “cramming down controversial gender ideology on three-year-olds."
Related: What are 'Religious Freedom' laws, and how are they used against LGBTQ+ people?
Montgomery County Public Schools maintained in its opposition filing that students simply having access to information does not violate religious freedom. Allowing families to opt students out of lessons also created concerns about "absenteeism" and "social stigma."
The district explained that it originally allowed parents to remove students from lessons, but reversed the decision in 2023 after a “growing number of opt out requests." It has since created a "careful, public, participatory selection process" for its material, which it said already "welcomes and incorporates parent feedback," and was followed to introduce the books.
"The growing number of opt-out requests, however, gave rise to three related concerns: high student absenteeism, the infeasibility of administering opt-outs across classrooms and schools, and the risk of exposing students who believe the storybooks represent them and their families to social stigma and isolation," the district wrote. "These consequences would defeat MCPS’s 'efforts to ensure a classroom environment that is safe and conducive to learning for all students' and risk putting MCPS out of compliance with nondiscrimination laws."
MCPS also said that the cited books are "not used in any lessons related to gender and sexuality." The books are instead used for "individual reading, classroom read-alouds, and other educational activities designed to foster and enhance literacy skills."
“Every court of appeals that has considered the question has held that mere exposure to controversial issues in a public-school curriculum does not burden the free religious exercise of parents or students,” the district wrote. “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.”
The books referenced in Mahmoud v. Taylor are age-appropriate picture books such as Pride Puppy, Uncle Bobby's Wedding, Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, and Love, Violet. The authors and illustrators of the books in the curriculum have released a statement through PEN America in support of the district.
"We created our books with love and care," they wrote in part. "Children and their parents need to see families like their own in books. We have all had the experience of meeting a child and their family who are delighted by our books. We have been told about children hugging our books and carrying them everywhere they go. We have heard emotional stories from adults who wish they had had our books when they were growing up. These were the books we ourselves needed when we were young."
"We oppose censoring or segregating books, like ours, that feature LGBTQ+ people. All families deserve to be seen and heard," they continued. "To act otherwise is harmful and sends a devastating message to students: that their lives and families are so offensive and dangerous that they can’t even be discussed in school. Specifically targeting books about one group of families and children is discriminatory and leaves this group vulnerable to mistreatment and bullying."
U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman denied the parents' request for a preliminary injunction that would restore the policy allowing them to opt their children out of lessons in August, 2023. She said the parents were unlikely to succeed in proving the merits of their case, which the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld in May, 2024.
"With or without an opt-out right, the parents remain free to pursue their sacred obligations to instruct their children in their faiths," Boardman wrote. "Even if their children’s exposure to religiously offensive ideas makes the parents’ efforts less likely to succeed, that does not amount to a government-imposed burden on their religious exercise."
After losing at the appeals court, the parents appealed their case to the Supreme Court, which in January agreed to hear it.
Oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor are set for April 22.
