The U.S. Supreme Court on June 27 ruled for parents in Maryland who, for religious reasons, want to opt their young children out of school storybooks that promote LGBT lifestyles.

The majority opinion in the 6–3 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor was written by Justice Samuel Alito.

The decision reverses a federal appeals court ruling that held that the parents failed to show that the school board’s policy infringed on their constitutional right to free exercise of religion.

The ruling allows litigation to continue in the lower courts.

The Supreme Court held that the parents met the legal burden required for a preliminary injunction to block the school board’s policy not to grant opt-outs.

“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. And a government cannot condition the benefit of free public education on parents’ acceptance of such instruction,” Alito wrote.

The storybooks promoted by the board are “clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected,” he added.

The court held that the parents were likely to succeed in their challenge to the board’s policies.

The case goes back to November 2022, when the Montgomery County Board of Education mandated new “LGBTQ-inclusive” storybooks for elementary school students that promote gender transitions, Pride parades, and same-sex romance between young children.

The board instructed employees responsible for selecting the books to use an “LGBTQ+ Lens” and to question whether “cisnormativity,” “stereotypes,” and “power hierarchies” are “reinforced or disrupted,” according to the petition filed on Sept. 12, 2024.

Parents were initially told they could opt their children out when the storybooks were read, the petition said. The board changed its policy in March 2023. Beginning with the 2023–24 academic year, the opt-out option was no longer in effect.

“If parents did not like what was taught to their elementary school kids, their only choice was to send them to private school or to homeschool,” the petition said.

Hundreds of parents, largely Eastern Orthodox Christians and Muslims, showed up at board meetings and testified that their respective faiths required that young children not be exposed to instruction on gender identity and sexuality.

After “parents emphasized how impressionable young children are and how they lack independent judgment to process such complex and sensitive issues,” the board members accused parents of promoting “hate” and likened them to “white supremacists” and “xenophobes,” according to the petition.

The parents sued after the board declined to accommodate them, arguing that they had a constitutional right to opt their children out of such instruction.

On Aug. 24, 2023, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman denied the parents’ application for an injunction to block the cancellation of the opt-out option.

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the ruling on May 15, 2024, holding that the parents had failed to demonstrate that an injunction blocking the board’s policy was justified.

The panel added that it took no view as to whether the parents would be able to produce enough evidence later in the proceeding to succeed in their case.

The panel also found there was no evidence that the board’s policy imposed a burden on the parents’ right to free exercise of religion.

In the majority opinion, Alito wrote that the Supreme Court has long recognized that parents have a right to direct the religious development of their own children and that government policies that “substantially interfere” with that direction carry with them “precisely the kind of objective danger to the free exercise of religion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent.”

The school board’s policies present precisely this kind of “objective danger,” he wrote.

The board may have characterized its “LGBTQ+-inclusive” instruction merely as “exposure to objectionable ideas” or as lessons in “mutual respect,” but the storybooks “unmistakably convey a particular viewpoint about same-sex marriage and gender.”

The board “has specifically encouraged teachers to reinforce this viewpoint and to reprimand any children who disagree,” and this goes well beyond mere exposure, the justice wrote.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined.

Public schools give children of all religions and backgrounds an education, as well as an opportunity “to practice living in our multicultural society,” and this experience is “critical to our Nation’s civic vitality,” Sotomayor wrote.

She wrote that the court majority ignores time-honored precedent and “invents a constitutional right to avoid exposure to ‘subtle’ themes ‘contrary to the religious principle’ that parents wish to instill in their children.”

Sotomayor wrote that the majority’s approach will lead to “chaos” in public schools. Making schools give advance notice and an opportunity to opt out of lesson plans or story times “that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools.”

Resource-strapped school districts will be dragged into costly litigation over opt-out rights, she wrote.

Schools may decide to censor curricula, removing material that might lead to religious objections. The majority opinion contorts precedent and gives “a subset of parents the right to veto curricular choices long left to locally elected school boards,” Sotomayor added.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared June 27, 2025, in The Epoch Times.

Photo: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito