SCOTUS rules for parents with religious objections to LGBTQ storybooks in schools
Parents with religious objections to LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks in public schools are entitled to an injunction that gives them a chance to opt their children out of the instruction, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision Friday.
The school board’s policy in Montgomery County, Maryland, is likely unconstitutional, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion.
“A government 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,” he wrote.
Alito said the case arises from the school board’s “abject refusal to heed widespread and impassioned pleas for accommodation.”
The Montgomery County school board had approved books such as Pride Puppy, about a puppy that gets lost during a gay pride parade, and My Rainbow, about a mother who makes a colorful wig for her transgender daughter.
Alito emphasized the message in different books, including Intersection Allies. One page shows an apparently transgender character named Kate in a sex-neutral bathroom.
“My friends defend my choices and place,” Kate says. “A bathroom, like all rooms, should be a safe space.”
The opinion included illustrated pages from the books.
The books, Alito said, exert a pressure to conform to their viewpoints. They do not merely expose children to the message that LGBTQ+ people exist and should be treated with kindness, as the dissent argues, Alito said.
“Only by air-brushing the record can the dissent claim that the books and instruction are just about exposure and kindness,” Alito said.
The parents had cited the 1972 Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder, which held that Amish parents had the right to exempt their children from compulsory education after the eighth grade.
Alito agreed that the school board policy imposes the kind of burden on religious exercise that Yoder found unacceptable.
Because the board policy burdens religious exercise, it should be evaluated using strict scrutiny, Alito said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented in an opinion joined by Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Public schools offer children an opportunity to live in a multicultural society, an experience that is “critical to our nation’s civic vitality,” Sotomayor wrote. “Yet it will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs.”
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit public interest law firm, represented the parents.
The case is Mahmoud v. Taylor.
Hat tip to SCOTUSblog, which had early coverage of the case.
See also:
Supreme Court majority appears to side with parents who object to instruction using LGBTQ storybooks
SCOTUS once again grapples with First Amendment religion clauses in Wisconsin employment tax case
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