The Supreme Court sided on Friday with a group of Maryland parents who argued that a school board’s policy preventing them from opting their children out of LGBT curriculum infringed on their religious freedom rights.
The 6-3 ruling from the high court marked the latest win for religious liberty advocates handed down by the justices this term. Justice Samuel Alito authored the majority opinion.
“The Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt-outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion. The parents have therefore shown that they are likely to succeed in their free exercise claims,” Alito wrote.
The majority ruling granted the Maryland parents a preliminary injunction and sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit for further proceedings. While the case continues in the lower court, the justices ordered the school board to notify parents and allow opt-outs when the types of books at the center of the case are part of classroom instruction.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Alito’s majority opinion. Thomas also authored a concurring opinion in which he discussed why he believed the board’s policy was unconstitutional as well as the ruling’s ramifications.
“Insofar as schools or boards attempt to employ their curricula to interfere with religious exercise, courts should carefully police such ‘ingenious defiance of the Constitution’ no less than they do in other contexts,” Thomas wrote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a blistering dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in which she said the majority decision would create “chaos” and be harmful for schools across the country.
“Public schools, this Court has said, are ‘at once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting our common destiny,’” 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.”
“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,” she added. “Today’s ruling ushers in that new reality.”
The Friday majority opinion is a key victory for religious and parental rights in public schools, holding with recent Supreme Court decisions affirming religious liberty.
The lawsuit stemmed from a 2023 decision by Montgomery County Public Schools to bar religious opt-outs for LGBT books, such as Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, which portrays a same-sex marriage, and Intersection Allies, which looks at nonbinary gender identities. The group of parents alleged that the school board’s decision not to notify parents that their children would be studying the controversial books and not to allow students to sit out of the LGBT-themed story time violated their Constitutional rights.
During oral arguments for the case held on April 22, a majority of the justices appeared ready to side with parents over the school district in the dispute.
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Lawyers for the parents argued the school board violated their First Amendment rights when it removed their ability to opt their children out of studying LGBT books. The school board’s lawyers argued that opening the door to sweeping opt-outs for curriculum that parents disagree with would “conscript courts into the role of playing school board.”
The decision will have sweeping implications for parents’ ability to pull their children out of controversial lessons at public schools for religious reasons.