The Supreme Court sided with parents who sued a public school district in Maryland for incorporating LGBTQ content into elementary school curriculum, mirroring a similar case in Western Pennsylvania.
The Supreme Court backed parental rights in a major decision on Friday, siding with religious parents against one of the wealthiest counties in the country in a case centered around LGBTQ content in elementary schools.
The six conservative justices ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents have the right to opt out from public school lessons that address homosexuality, and transgender ideology should they conflict with the families’ religious beliefs. The Trump administration filed a brief with the court supporting the parents.
“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,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in the majority opinion. “And a government cannot condition the benefit of free public education on parents’ acceptance of such instruction.”
The families sued Montgomery County Public Schools after the district decided to incorporate books featuring “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer characters” into its pre-K to 12 language arts curricula while denying families the right to opt out of the lessons.
Montgomery County Public Schools is Maryland’s largest school district and serves one of America’s most religiously diverse and wealthiest counties. The group of parents who sued Montgomery County Public Schools included families of Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox faiths.
The Supreme Court ruling aligns with a 2024 ruling by Judge Joy Flowers Conti in the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania about similar lessons offered at a Pittsburgh-area school. Judge Conti sided with parents of first graders who sued Mt. Lebanon School District in Allegheny County after first-grade teacher Megan Williams read children a book about gender transitioning and showed students a video called “Jacob’s New Dress.”
“A teacher instructing first-graders and reading books to show that their parents’ beliefs about their children’s gender identity may be wrong directly repudiates parental authority,” wrote Judge Conti in her decision. “Williams’ conduct struck at the heart of Plaintiffs’ own families and their relationship with their own young children. The books read and Williams’ instruction to her first-grade students taught that gender is determined by the child – not, in accordance with the Parents’ beliefs, by God or biological reality.”
Whether in Maryland or Pennsylvania, federal courts have been consistent in recent months in deferring to parents when public schools elect to incorporate LGBTQ materials in elementary school education.
