On The Front Lines
SCOTUS: Religious Parents Have the Right to Opt Young Children Out of School Curriculum Promoting Alternative Ideas on Sexuality, Gender
WASHINGTON, DC — In a win for parental and religious rights, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 that the government violates the First Amendment and “burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses a very real threat of undermining the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill.”
In Mahmoud v. Taylor, parents from various religious backgrounds sought a religious exemption to opt their elementary-aged children out of mandatory public school readings and discussions of books involving LGBTQ sexuality and themes. This included students in pre-Kindergarten and Head Start classrooms. One of the books is Pride Puppy!, which teaches the alphabet to three- and four-year-old children by following the path of a puppy in an LGBTQ pride parade and tasking children with finding pictures that correspond to letters of controversial and sexual terms such as “[drag] queen,” “[drag] king,” “leather,” “lip ring,” “underwear,” and “intersex.”
The Rutherford Institute and the NC Values Institute had submitted an amicus brief arguing that the lack of an opt-out provision unlawfully forces parents to choose between raising their children in accordance with their religious convictions or giving them a free public education. The Court agreed and stated that the “government cannot condition the benefit of free public education on parents’ acceptance of such instruction.”
“Despite the government’s attitude that it knows best, public school students are not wards of the state, to do with as government officials decree,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “The harm caused by attitudes and policies that treat young people as state vassals is not merely a short-term deprivation of individual rights. It also reflects the disconcerting view that civil liberties—including religious freedom—may be discarded at the caprice of government officials. Yet parents should not be expected to forfeit their rights when they send their children to a public school.”
The case arose in Maryland after the Montgomery County Board of Education adopted several “LGBTQ-Inclusive Books” as part of its English curriculum in October 2022. Among the required books are Pride Puppy! and Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, which is about a transgender boy. In addition to the inclusion of the LGBTQ-Inclusive Books, the school board included guidance advising teachers to “disrupt the either/or thinking” of students who disagree with LGBTQ relationships. It also counseled teachers to respond to questions about being transgender by stating that “our body parts do not decide our gender. Our gender comes from our inside.”
The school board initially allowed religious parents to request an exemption from their children being taught with this material. However, on March 23, 2023, the board removed parents’ ability to opt-out their children. The parents did not challenge the schools’ use of the books, but simply sought to regain the right to remove their children from that teaching which contradicted their religious beliefs. In reversing the lower court ruling, the Supreme Court found that the parents are likely to succeed and are entitled to a preliminary injunction, under which “the Board should be ordered to notify them in advance whenever one of the books in question or any other similar book is to be used in any way and to allow them to have their children excused from that instruction” while their lawsuit proceeds.
Attorney Deborah J. Dewart advanced the arguments in the Mahmoud v. Taylor amicus brief.
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, defends individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
Case History
March 13, 2025 • Should Parents Have the Right to Opt Their Young Children Out of School Curriculum Promoting Alternative Ideas About Sexuality and Gender?
