Supreme Court will rule on allowing parents to ban students from LGBTQ+ lessons

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could allow guardians to prohibit students from hearing lessons or using books involving LGBTQ+ identities.

The court voted Friday to hear Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case brought by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty on behalf of several Maryland parents who claimed that their First Amendment rights were somehow violated when Montgomery County Public Schools expanded its collections of books in school classrooms and libraries.

While senior counsel at Becket, Eric Baxter, accused the district of “cramming down controversial gender ideology on three-year-olds," MCPS maintained in its recent opposition filing that "like all other books in the language-arts curriculum, these storybooks impart critical reading skills through engaging, age-appropriate stories."

The district wrote that "reading materials have not always reflected the diversity of the community MCPS serves," so it "worked to change that by incorporating new books to better represent MCPS students and families" starting in the 2022-2023 school year. The books added include "characters, families, and historical figures from a range of cultural, racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds."

MCPS also "approved a handful of storybooks featuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer characters for use in the language-arts curriculum," emphasizing that the books are available "alongside the many books already in the curriculum that feature heterosexual characters in traditional gender roles."

The district said that "the storybooks 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."

The district 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.

“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.”