Supreme Court debates if religious parents can opt kids out of LGBT school lessons
April 23, 2025
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case that weighs the extent to which parents may choose to opt their children out of public school curriculum that includes LGBT-themed books.
The Christian Post reports that justices heard oral arguments on Tuesday in the case of Mahmoud, Tamer, et al. v. Taylor, Thomas W., et al., which arose over whether parents in Montgomery County, Maryland have the right to exempt their children from lessons containing LGBT ideology.
Arguing the case on behalf of a diverse coalition of Christian, Muslim and Jewish parents, Eric Baxter of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty said that, “petitioners deserve complete preliminary relief” from Maryland’s largest school district because it won’t allow them to opt their children out of the lessons.
Baxter argued, “Exempting students for some religious reasons but not others cannot be squared with the First Amendment. In a system where thousands of students are daily opted in and out of the class for multiple reasons, there’s no basis for denying opt-outs for religious reasons.”
Baxter also noted that simply having LGBT-themed books in public schools is “exposure” but clarified that having teachers openly endorse the message of such books to a captive audience is “coercion.”
Arguing on behalf of the school district, Alan Evan Schoenfeld told the justices that “every day in public elementary school classrooms across the country, children are taught ideas that conflict with their family’s religious beliefs.”
According to the Christian Post, Justice Samuel Alito took exception to what he characterized as the school district’s rejection of sincerely held religious beliefs, stating, “I don’t think it’s true that the public schools can do whatever they want,” he responded. “There are clear lines to be drawn; this court has drawn them.”
The case can be traced back to October 2022 when the Montgomery County Board of Education approved a list of LGBT-themed books for inclusion in the district’s English language arts curriculum.
A group of parents sued the board, arguing that the district had violated their sincerely held beliefs but a U.S. District Court judge rejected the motion for a preliminary injunction in August 2023.
That ruling was upheld by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2024 in a 2-1 decision.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal in January of this year when it issued a miscellaneous orders list.
Photo: top, Credit: Screenshot:Twitter/Asra Nomani