Montgomery County, Maryland, parents are appealing to the Supreme Court for the right to opt their children out of story books that contain LGBTQ storylines in school.
Parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, are fighting for the right for their families to opt out of mandatory LGBTQ story books in their children’s school and their case is now headed to the Supreme Court.
A coalition of Jewish, Christian and Muslim parents of school-age children in Montgomery County Public Schools have brought a lawsuit against the school board, alleging it is violating their religious freedoms protected under the First Amendment, by forcing their young children to participate in instruction contrary to their religious beliefs.
The controversy began in November 2022 when the Montgomery County Public Schools introduced new LGBTQ books into the curriculum as part of the district’s “inclusivity” initiative. According to Becket, a legal group representing the parents’ case, the books “champion pride parades, gender transitioning and pronoun preferences for children.”
While the school board initially allowed parents to opt their children out of this curriculum, according to Becket, the board quickly reversed course, announcing in March 2023 that an opt-out would not be granted and that parents would not be notified before the books were introduced into their children’s classrooms.
The parents sued the school in May 2023, but the district court ruled against the parents. Becket appealed the decision to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed the lower court’s ruling against the parents, in a 2-1 decision, saying they had not shown how the policy violated their children’s First Amendment rights.
On January 17, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor, during its 2024-2025 term.
Grace Morrison, one of the plaintiffs in the case, is a mother of seven children who lives in Montgomery County. Her youngest child, who has Down’s Syndrome and other special needs, was attending public school and headed into fourth grade when she was made aware of the new school policy.
Morrison and her husband are Catholic and were concerned that the ideology presented in these books not only violated their religious convictions but also was inappropriate, given her daughter’s age and intellectual ability.
SUPREME COURT TO DECIDE IF FAMILIES CAN OPT OUT OF READING LGBTQ BOOKS IN THE CLASSROOM
“We felt as parents that we would present these things to our children like we always have, when they’re ready to receive them. And especially a child with special needs, it’s even more difficult for her to understand,” Morrison told Fox News Digital.
“Starting to present issues of gender ideology to a child like this could be extremely confusing and damaging, let alone to the faith that we’re raising her in.”
Morrison and her husband ended up pulling their daughter from school the following October, after the district court rejected the parents’ plea for an opt-out.
They’ve since been homeschooling their daughter, which Morrison says has been a “beautiful” but also “challenging” experience.
Her daughter is now no longer able to access the therapy and resources that she had received through the public school, costing her family an extra $25,000 a year to provide her with the appropriate academic services and therapy she needs at home, according to court documents.
“While it’s been a blessing, it is also a financial burden that we didn’t expect at this point, but there was no way that we could leave her in the school system and just hope for the best. We weren’t going to do that,” Morrison told Fox News Digital.
According to Becket, the Montgomery County School Board in Maryland is one of the few school boards across the nation to ban notices and opt-outs for parents on sexuality and gender instruction.
The legal group said that 38 states, including Washington, D.C., require opt-out options for parents. Six states require a combination of opt-in and opt-out rights, while four states require opt-ins from parents before instruction begins, and three states do not mention opt-out policies but do not have a policy banning them either.
Becket attorney William Haun told Fox News Digital that they will center their argument before the Supreme Court on the parents’ First Amendment rights being violated by this school policy, saying that the Free Exercise clause protects the authority of parents, even with children in public schools, to opt out of instruction that would interfere with their child’s religious development.
“Particularly here, when you’re talking about three-year-olds, four-year-olds, children who have special needs, children who are in elementary school, this is a highly impressionable time when children implicitly trust their teachers. And you’re going to matters that really strike at the heart of parental authority because they go to the heart of who the child is,” Haun said.
“If parents don’t have authority there, it’s hard to imagine where they would,” he continued.
The attorney clarified that they are not asking MCPS to remove these books but are focusing on the right of parents to opt-out.
The Montgomery County Board of Education said they are “unable to make a statement on pending legal action at the time.”
