Citing religious liberty, Supreme Court allows parents to opt out of LGBTQ books
On Friday, in a major decision, the United States Supreme Court reassured itself with parents in a case involving religious freedom and public education.
The judges judged that a group of parents from Maryland could withdraw their children from the program which, according to them, violates their religious beliefs while their trial against the school district continues. The decision broke out 6-3 along the ideological lines of the court.
The opinion of the High Court intervenes in the midst of current clashes on cultural issues and parental rights and, more broadly, the fundamental objective of American public schools. In this case, Mahmoud c. Taylor, the conservative majority decided that the Montgomery County School Board has violated the rights of the parents’ first amendment by preventing them from withdrawing their children from teaching involving books on the theme of the LGBTQ.
Why we wrote this
In a case closely observed on religious freedom and public education, the Supreme Court reassured itself with parents who wanted to remove their children from the theme of the LGBTQ.
Muslim, Catholics and Ukrainian Orthodox parents who have submitted the trial maintains that the Council policy violates their right to freely exercise their religion. In the opinion of the majority, judge Samuel Alito said they should succeed with their complaints.
The Supreme Court has long recognized the rights of parents to direct “religious education” of their children, “he wrote. “And we have judged that these rights are raped by government policies which” interfere considerably[e] With religious development “children”.
The decision is a step in the right direction, explains Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute.
“It is better than not authorizing the covers, in terms of freedom,” he says. Now, “at least, if you think that something is imposed on your children in violation of your religion, you can remove them from this lesson.”
Judge Sonia Sotomayor is dissident, in disagreement with the idea that the decision simply confirms the precedent of the High Court. The decision, she wrote, will have a much broader impact.
“The Court invents a constitutional right to avoid exposure to” subtle “themes unlike religious principles” that parents wish to instill in their children, “she added. “The result will be chaos for public schools in this country.”
Justin Driver, a professor of the Faculty of Law of Yale who was co-author of a memory in support of the School Board, agrees.
This decision “succeeds in opening the Pandora box in countless classrooms located in public schools in our country,” he said in an email. “He recklessly grants parents and students authority, in fact, the veto to individual school lessons and academic assignments, thus wreaking havoc.”
Parents’ rights and a controversial program
The study program in the event of the case is a selection of “LGBTQ-inclusive” image books to be taught for kindergarten students to the fifth year. Books have titles such as “Pride Puppy”, “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” and “Allied intersection”, which approach gender and sexuality.
The stories relate to “a family assisting a parade of pride, a niece meeting the husband, a prince of his uncle, falling in love with a knight as they fight a dragon in a mythical kingdom, a girl feeling nervous at the idea of giving a Valentine to his crushing, and a transgender boy sharing his gender identity with his family”, according to a legal file BOARD OF EDUCATION AND SEACUCTION.
The school board argues that books, which have been approved for teaching English arts in elementary schools, align with its attempts to better represent the diversity of students and families. Public schools in Montgomery County, the largest district in Maryland, serves just under 160,000 students outside of Washington, DC, and is one of the most diverse places in the United States.
The school district said that books were not used in any lessons on gender or sexuality. “No student is also requested or should not change their opinions on their own or other students, sexual orientation or sex,” says their brief.
Parents from various religious horizons, however, want to be able to draw their children from any instruction using the books. In the majority opinion, judge Alito said he had this right. The books in question, he writes, are “clearly conceived to present certain values and beliefs as things to celebrate and certain values and contrary beliefs as things to reject”.
The policy of the board of directors, he noted, “encourages teachers to correct children and accuse them of being” hurtful “when they express a certain degree of religious confusion.”
“What parents are looking for here is not the right to microchip the public school program, but rather to ensure that their children withdraw from a particular educational requirement which makes their right well established” to direct “religious education” of their children, “he concluded.
Unlimited opt-outs?
Against this assertion, the three liberal judges of the Court expressed concerns about the slippery slope that the decision could create. Does this have an avalanche of prosecution requiring denominational disabled other courses, from evolution to the roles of women in society?
“Never, in the context of public schools or elsewhere, this court deemed only a simple exposure to concepts incompatible with its religious beliefs could give birth to a complaint from the first amendment,” explains Judge Sotomayor in his dissent.
The majority opinion creates “a very amorphous standard”, explains Ira Lupu, professor emeritus at the George Washington University Law School who co-signed a memory of AMICUS in support of the School Board.
Opinion made “no attempt” to limit its detention to LGBTQ +problems, he adds.
That, he suggests, upsets the previous one that parents could not simply oppose their children’s exhibition to the ideas with whom their parents disagree. “This has been the law for 40 years. … except that exposure and not a constrained assertion of a certain kind, then your religious freedom is not undermined.”
In a press call shortly after the opinion fell, Grace Morrison, a mother of the county of Montgomery of a child with Down syndrome, described the decision to triumph for families.
“Given [my daughter’s] Learning challenges, she has trouble understanding why her parents and teachers could disagree, “said Morrison.” Unfortunately, we had to remove it from school to protect her from this confusion, a sacrifice that no parent should be forced to do. »»
A scary effect is also likely, explains Dr. McCluskey of the Cato Institute.
“What I expect to continue to see is that if a public school serves a population that has a lot of disagreement on subjects,” he says, “they will tend to avoid controversial subjects.”
