A day after the tenth anniversary of the landmark case decision that legalized same-sex marriage, Obergefell vs. Hodges, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of parents seeking to opt their kids out of reading LGBTQ literature.
In a 6-3 vote, with the conservative members making up the majority vote, the court backed the opinion of parents who want to pull their elementary school-aged children from lessons involving queer-themed books, if they have religious objections to the material.
The case had been brought to the high court by Maryland parents who had objected to the Montgomery County Board of Education’s decision not to allow an opt-out possibility for their children, claiming that their First Amendment rights to religious expression had been violated.
In 2022, the school board of Montgomery, which sits just outside of Washington, revised its English language arts curriculum to include more story books with LGBTQ+ elements in an effort to better reflect some of the families whose children attended their schools. Among the approved books were “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” which features a gay character who is getting married, and “Born Ready,” about a transgender child who wants to identify as a boy.
Challenging the move, religious members of the community, as well as a parent group called Kids First sued the school system. The groups stated that they had a right to protect their children from being taught content that conflicts with their religious beliefs by expressing support for same-sex relationships and transgender rights. A federal judge, along with a Richmond, Virginia-based Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled in favor of the school board, forcing the issue upward to the Supreme Court.
Writing the opinion for the majority in this case, Justice Samuel Alito wrote the following: “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.”
In a rare move and signal of her profound disappointment in the ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor announced her dissent from the bench. Joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor wrote that public schools “offer to children of all faiths and backgrounds an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society.”
“That experience,” she continued, “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.”
Justin Driver, a law professor at Yale, said the decision was deeply problematic.“This decision succeeds in opening a Pandora’s box in countless classrooms located in our nation’s public schools,” he said. “It unwisely grants parents and students the authority to, in effect, veto individual school lessons and assignments, thereby wreaking educational havoc.”