In yet another bombshell decision for its 2025 term, the US Supreme Court ruled on June 27 that Maryland unconstitutionally burdened the religious exercise of parents by using schoolbooks in the classroom about gay relationships and trans identities that threatened to undermine family religious beliefs while denying them an opportunity to opt out. The ruling will require the nation’s public schools to accommodate parents’ rights over the moral upbringing of their children by either allowing people of faith to opt out or by selecting teaching materials more effectively.
Schools vs Parents
The case of Mahmoud v. Taylor considered a challenge by parents of varying religious views to public school texts for very young students that critics argued promoted LGBT lifestyles. Social justice ideology has thrust these issues into every crevice of media and politics.
Even non-religious parents may take exception to teaching five-year-olds about homosexuality, gender dysphoria, and other mature subjects. The young age of the students influenced the six to three majority’s ruling, as well as the concurrence of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who emphasized, “The practice of teaching sexuality and gender identity to very young children at school appears to be significantly more recent than typical sex education.” The Court additionally took issue with the forceful manner in which the Maryland schools implemented the teaching in both the books and advice to teachers.
It is one thing to teach children about abortion and quite another to take the moral position in schools that abortion is immoral or, conversely, that it is a public good or universal right. Similarly, the Court reasoned that the Maryland materials did not just teach that gay or trans people exist, but that a favorable view of gay marriage or affirming transgenderism is a moral imperative. This, the Court reasoned, was a direct infringement on the religious oversight of parents.
The Parents Win
Alliance Defending Freedom filed a brief in support of the parents. The organization’s Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch stated:
“Government officials may not second-guess loving parents’ decisions. For centuries, American history, tradition, and judicial precedent have made that clear. But today, many school officials act as if their job is to replace parents and their beliefs — not support them.”
The Mahmoud majority agreed, subjecting the Maryland school materials to the high constitutional standard called “strict scrutiny.” The dissent asserted that the majority was censoring materials that merely exposed children to different lifestyles, but the majority sharply dismissed this claim, writing:
“We similarly disagree with the dissent’s deliberately blinkered view that these storybooks and related instruction merely ‘expos[e] students to the “message” that LGBTQ people exist’ and teach them to treat others with kindness … Only by air-brushing the record can the dissent claim that the books and instruction are just about exposure and kindness.”
A Histrionic Dissent
The strident dissent conjured fears that the “result will be chaos for this Nation’s public schools,” “will impose impossible administrative burdens,” and "will have serious chilling effects on public school curricula.” It further suggested the ruling will compel schools to avoid books about women’s rights, the consumption of meat, interfaith marriage, and other issues for fear of suit. On the issue of sexual orientation, the dissent argued:
“The majority’s myopic attempt to resolve a major constitutional question through close textual analysis of [one of the books] also reveals its failure to accept and account for a fundamental truth: LGBTQ people exist. They are part of virtually every community and workplace of any appreciable size.”
This strikes at the heart of the decision as well as the ongoing public debate. Americans do not dispute that LGBTQ people exist, but whether their lifestyles are to be lauded in public schools. Millions of parents of religious orthodoxy (and many secular parents) object that the mere existence of a lifestyle does not make it moral, even as social justice ideology imposed through public institutions invokes existence as affirmation. These are competing moral views: There is no room to “agree to disagree” except to either omit the materials from the instruction for the very young or afford liberty to those who object to excuse their children.
It is unlikely that public schools will eliminate these social justice materials from instruction, but they will have to be more selective so that books are not overtly one-sided. Nor will there be an onslaught of lawsuits, so long as parents are permitted the opportunity to exclude their young children from these classes.
These conflicts have arisen in the wake of a one-sided barrage by ultra-liberal forces bulldozing parents, which has led to a growing loss of students to a homeschooling wave. The Supreme Court may be doing public schools a favor by slowing down their runaway indoctrination of other people’s young children at such an impressionable age.
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