Source: CNN
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to review whether schools may read LGBTQ+ books to elementary school students without giving parents the ability to opt their children out on religious grounds.
The lawsuit over a Maryland school district’s policy landed at the Supreme Court amid raging culture war fights about transgender rights and how much control parents should have over school curriculum.
A group of mostly Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox parents sued Montgomery County schools over the policy, arguing that it violated their First Amendment religious rights, and were seeking an injunction that would block the policy while courts considered their underlying First Amendment challenge.
Lower federal courts have that request. A divided 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that denying opt-outs does not require the students to “change their religious beliefs or conduct,” and therefore did not infringe on the parents’ religious freedom. The appeals court said that because the case was in an early stage, it didn’t yet know enough about how the books are being used to block the policy’s implementation.
The Montgomery County school board approved a group of “LGBTQ-Inclusive books” as part of the English curriculum in 2022. Initially, the board allowed parents to opt out, but it then reversed course. The school board said that decisions about how the books would be implemented in the classroom would be left to a teachers’ discretion.
But the policy drew pushback from several people, including some teachers and principals concerned about whether the material was appropriate for elementary school students, according to court records.
The parents who sued are not seeking to ban the books but rather the policy of denying them the opportunity to opt their children out of their reading.
“New government-imposed orthodoxy about what children are ‘supposed’ to think about gender and sexuality is not a constitutional basis to sideline a child’s own parents,” the parents said in their appeal.