The Freedom From Religion Foundation is appalled at the U.S. Supreme Court decision today in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which opens the door for parents to opt out of inclusive public school curricula on religious grounds.
“This is a deeply troubling outcome for public education, equality and the constitutional principle of the separation between state and church,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.
The case involves a group of religious parents who objected to LGBTQ-plus characters in storybooks that were approved for use in a Maryland school district. The parents claimed that their religious beliefs require the school to exempt their children from being exposed to the inclusive stories, demanding the right to withdraw children from classes on days when stories with LGBTQ-plus themes are discussed. The lower courts rightly declined to issue a preliminary injunction that would require schools to notify the parents when the storybooks would be used and provide them a chance to opt out of instruction. The lower court noted the “threadbare” evidentiary record and affirmed that public schools are not required to tailor their curricula to individual religious preferences.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s extremist majority has now reversed that sensible approach and sided with the parents.
The court held in a 6–3 decision that LGBTQ-plus inclusive materials amounted to inculcation against faith and that not providing an opt-out to the plaintiffs violates their Free Exercise rights. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court, described the books as “clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.” Alito found that these books created a substantial burden on the religious exercise of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian petitioners. Justice Clarence Thomas, in concurrence, wrote that almost all LGBTQ-plus books integrated into broader education would be considered hostile toward religion and create “ideological conformity.”
While the majority opinion paves a regressive path, the impassioned dissent in the judgment reaffirms that public schools exist to prepare students for life in a diverse and pluralistic society and not to shield them from it.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored the dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The dissent reiterated that public schools are the “symbol of our democracy.” Sotomayor wrote, “They offer to children of all faiths and backgrounds an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society. That experience is critical to our nation’s civic vitality.” She warned, “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 dissent correctly points out that the majority opinion “constitutionalizes a parental veto power over curricular choices long left to the democratic process and local administrators.” Sotomayor concludes, “The reverberations of the court’s error will be felt, I fear, for generations. Unable to condone that grave misjudgment, I dissent.”
FFRF had filed a friend-of-the-court brief before the Supreme Court to support the Montgomery County School Board. The brief emphasized that the parents had not cited a single precedent in which a neutral curriculum policy was invalidated based solely on claims of hostility to religion. Courts have consistently ruled that parents do not have a Free Exercise or Due Process right to insulate their children from ideas they find objectionable in public education.
“As our brief detailed, for nearly a century, parents claiming that mere exposure to history, science or life skills that conflict with their religion have uniformly lost on that point,” adds FFRF Legal Fellow Hirsh M. Joshi, who helped author FFRF’s amicus brief. “But every day is a new day to favor religion over decades of well-settled legal precedent.”
“This ruling threatens to give any religious parent veto power over public school curricula,” warns Gaylor. “If this dangerous logic is carried forward, it could unravel decades of progress toward inclusive education and equal rights. It has grave ramifications for the teaching of evolution, for example. Public schools must be grounded in facts and reality and not subject to religious censors.”
This decision undermines the First Amendment, emboldens religious interference in public education, and sets a harmful precedent for the future. FFRF will continue to fight to protect secular, inclusive and evidence-based education for all students — free from religious coercion and censorship.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is the largest national association of freethinkers, representing atheists, agnostics, and others who form their opinions about religion based on reason rather than faith, tradition, or authority. Founded in Wisconsin in 1978 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, FFRF has more than 42,000 members, including members in every state and the District of Columbia. FFRF’s primary purposes are to educate about nontheism and to preserve the cherished constitutional principle of separation between religion and government.
