Supreme Court to Decide Whether Parents Can Opt Kids Out of LGBTQ+ Curriculum - And The Implications Are Far-Reaching

Oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor were heard by the high court today.

When officials at the Montgomery County school district in suburban Washington withdrew its parental opt-out policy for curriculum that conflicted with the families’ religious beliefs, they probably never expected it would set off a chain of events that would land them smack dab in the middle of a religious liberty battle before the nation’s highest court. Protestors on both sides of the issue rallied outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. this morning, ahead of oral arguments in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor. The school district introduced books like “Prince and Knight”, “Pride Puppy”, and “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” into its elementary school reading program in 2022, which feature stories centered around gay couples and LGBTQ+ pride. As Justice Samuel Alito remarked during today’s arguments,

I don't think anybody can read that and say, well, this is just telling children that there are occasions when men marry other men, that Uncle Bobby gets married to his boyfriend, Jamie, and everybody's happy and everything is -- you know, it portrays this -- everyone accepts this except for the little girl, Chloe, who has reservations about it. But her mother corrects her: No, you shouldn't have any reservations about this. … It has a clear moral message. And it may be a good message. It's just a message that a lot of religious people disagree with.

You can say that again, Justice Alito. And, as even Justice Elena Kagan admitted today, “these are, you know, young kids’ picture books, and on matters concerning sexuality, I suspect there are a lot of non-religious parents who weren’t all that thrilled about this…” But the point is that the First Amendment of our U.S. Constitution protects the free exercise of religion, and that includes parents who want to decide how to raise their children, like the petitioners in Mahmoud who - although they are of differing faiths (Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox) - share traditional beliefs about sex, gender, and marriage in common. But at the end of the day, this isn’t a case about whether children should be taught about gay marriage, transgender ideology, or anything else. This is a case about whether parents or schools get the final say about what children can be taught, and whether school curriculum trumps a families’ faith.

And that’s what I’d like to hone in on here. Because, in my view, this case has implications far beyond the singular situation of parents who wish to opt their children out of curriculum that conflicts with their sincerely-held religious beliefs. Frequently cited today was the 1972 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder, in which the Court held that a state law compelling children to attend school beyond eighth grade was unconstitutional, as it violated the Amish parents’ First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. In that case, the Court made clear that parents have the right to direct the religious upbringing of their children. Yoder is a case we’ve frequently cited in We The Patriots USA’s ongoing litigation to win back religious exemptions to mandatory school vaccinations in Connecticut. As Acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris astutely noted in her amicus brief in support of the petitioners,

The Board’s no-opt-out policy burdens petitioners’ religious practice by forcing them to send their children to classrooms that will instruct their children using the storybooks’ materials involving gender and sexuality. Petitioners believe that sending their children to school in those circumstances violates their religious obligations. To respect their faiths, petitioners must forgo public education entirely and comply with Maryland’s compulsory-education laws some other way, for instance by shouldering the expenses of private schooling.

Sound familiar? Families in Connecticut (and California, New York, and Maine) have for years now been forced to choose between honoring their faiths or forgoing a public education (which in Connecticut happens to be a fundamental right contained in its state constitution). So if the Court reaffirms Yoder and holds that schools cannot condition a public education on an agreement to violate one’s religious beliefs, it could be very helpful to our fight to win back parents’ right to opt out of mandatory school vaccinations on the basis of their religious beliefs. If students shouldn’t be forced to listen to stories about gay weddings to attend school, they certainly should not be forced to receive injections containing animal byproducts and manufactured using aborted fetal tissue to attend school!

It something that, to most of my readers, probably seems painfully obvious. But it wasn’t to the Second Circuit in our lawsuit on behalf of three Connecticut families who wanted to opt out of school vaccinations. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court didn’t take up that case. But we should all be grateful that they took up Mahmoud, and that the early indications based on today’s arguments are that the Justices appear to be leaning toward ruling in favor of the parents’ right to refuse, and their truly sacred right (and duty) of child-rearing. Please stay tuned here and on the We The Patriots USA email list, where we’ll be sure to provide you with legal updates regarding this case and others with strong implications for parental, religious, and health freedoms.