Montgomery County Public Schools must allow students whose parents do not want them learning from storybooks with LGBTQIA+ characters to opt out of those lessons, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The decision was not a final ruling in the Mahmoud v. Taylor case, but the justices stated parents are “likely to succeed” in their underlying challenge against the school system.

The outcome is likely to reverberate across school districts nationwide. In Maryland, for example, no school district currently allows such accommodations, according to the Maryland State Department of Education.

In a 6-3 vote, the court sided with the elementary school parents — of Islamic, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox faiths — who say they are deprived of the right to freely exercise their religion when they’re not allowed to opt their children out of reading books that they say go against their faith.

During the 2022-2023 school year, Montgomery schools incorporated into its English curriculum new books with diverse characters, families and historical figures. That included a handful with LGBTQIA+ characters.

Storylines included a family attending a pride parade, a prince falling in love with a knight while battling a dragon and a transgender boy sharing his identity with this family. They’re used for individual reading, classroom read-aloud sessions and literacy-enhancement activities, the school district said. Teachers were required to incorporate at least one of the books each school year.

The school system briefly had an opt-out option but then removed it, saying it was too difficult to accommodate students who couldn’t use the same materials.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in April. The case arrived via an emergency injunction after the lower courts denied the parents’ request to be notified when one of the storybooks was being read so they could opt their kids out of the lesson.

“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,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s opinion, quoting from the 1972 case, Wisonsin v. Yoder.

In the dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated the result of the ruling will be “chaos” for public schools.

“Many school districts, and particularly the most resource strapped, cannot afford to engage in costly litigation over opt-out rights or to divert resources to tracking and managing student absences,” she wrote.

Here’s what a parent, an educator and a legal expert say about the case.

Legal expert

There’s no question that this ruling will encourage more parents to challenge public schools, said David Weisenfeld, a nonpracticing attorney who regularly contributes to the American Bar Association’s Supreme Court Preview publication.

He said he doesn’t think it will result in barring instruction with LGBTQIA+ content, but he predicted before the decision that the justices will see that parents had a legitimate gripe. It’s not that parents were arguing that the lessons shouldn’t be taught, just that their kids should have the option to skip them.

Montgomery County is the only system in the state that had an opt-out policy of LGBTQIA+ material, according to the Maryland State Department of Education, but Weisenfeld said it’s possible that other school districts in the state and around the nation will follow suit.

What’s also possible, he said, is that the decision will have a chilling effect on teaching. He compared it to companies backing away from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives after directives from President Donald Trump’s administration.

Weisenfeld said the books at the center of the controversy aren’t all that controversial.

“We’re talking about things that, in some cases, may not have had any more sexual content than ‘Cinderella’ or other books that are widely accepted,” Weisenfeld said.

Before the case reached the Supreme Court, lower courts sided with Montgomery County Public Schools.

Judge G. Steven Agee of the Fourth Circuit appeals court wrote that parents offered no evidence that the school system pressured their kids to change their religious beliefs. Hearing other views doesn’t necessarily mean students are being pressured to act differently from their faith, he added.

Parent

Rosalind Hanson, not a plaintiff but head of the Montgomery County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative parental rights group, said she was “joyous” after the ruling.

“This is going to be a great opportunity for us to have a wonderful dialogue with Montgomery County Public Schools and figure out how best to move forward,” she said.

Before the decision, she said siding with the parents means preserving the religious liberties of everyone in the nation.

“Parents, not schools, are best equipped to know when and how to teach their children about sensitive topics like human sexuality,” Hanson said.

Other parents had the same thoughts, including the plaintiffs. They wanted their kids to opt out of those classes because of the family’s religion, children’s ages or not wanting their kids to learn about sex and gender identity.

Teachers tried accommodating the opt-out request by finding a substitute teacher to instruct them instead. But it became difficult to find available staff, they said. In March 2023, Montgomery announced the opt-out option for lessons that included the LGBTQIA+ storybooks would end for the 2023-2024 school year.

Hanson and other parents were upset about the policy change. She said there were inconsistencies when it came to what classes allow for opt-outs. For instance, state law allows families to opt-out of instruction related to family life and human sexuality.

When it comes to accommodating the students who are opted-out, Hanson said she’s “confident the skilled teachers in MCPS won’t have an issue complying with the Supreme Court’s order.”

Educator

David Stein, president of the Montgomery County Education Association, the district’s teachers union, said the decision will be damaging.

After the ruling, he said he agreed with a point Sotomayor made in her dissenting opinion: “If reading a storybook is subject to strict scrutiny, then everything is,” he said.

Allowing parents to opt out of whatever they’d like is not only “damaging to psyches, but it will become un-operational for overworked educators at every single level,” Stein, who taught math for 30 years, said earlier this week. “How is a teacher supposed to deal with that situation when any parent can opt out of any piece of learning that they don’t think is appropriate for their kid?”

He said people come to public schools to learn and appreciate the diversity. Exposing students to different religions or to LGBTQIA+ themes is not the same as indoctrination, as some parents have claimed, Stein added.

He said he doesn’t think Montgomery schools should have allowed an opt-out policy for the storybooks in the first place

When students do opt-out, they can’t simply sit in a corner, he said. They have to be placed somewhere else with another staffer. Teachers would have to tell administrators what books are being read, then administrators would have to find an available teacher who can supervise the opted-out kids.

If multiple teachers in one school are using those storybooks at various times throughout the day, things can get tricky, said the educator.

Stein also said he was concerned about the message opting out would send to students: That it is OK to make kids in LGBTQIA+ families invisible. School staffs have to make sure all students feel affirmed in their identity, he said.

Stein said he isn’t opposed to parent involvement.

“But that doesn’t mean that we get to just close our eyes and tell our children that they’re going to be able to be blinded to the world that’s around them,” Stein said.

On Friday, the union leader said he wondered about where they go from here, worried that students will soon be excused from lessons on evolution or vaccines.

“I think we’re headed to a really dark place,” he said.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.