On January 17, 2025, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in a potential blockbuster dispute from Maryland now named Mahmoud v. Taylor.
Mahmoud may be the Court’s most significant case on parental rights to direct the upbringing of their children since 1925’s Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus and Mary.
In Pierce, while upholding the rights of non-public schools to operate, the Justices reasoned that “[t]he child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
Mahmoud is part of the ongoing battle that I have chronicled in Catholic World Report as courts continue to ignore Pierce’s protecting parental rights to direct the upbringing of their children.
In Mahmoud, an interfaith coalition of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish parents unsuccessfully challenged educators’ refusal to allow them to opt their pre-school and elementary school-aged children out of instruction using storybooks discussing “gay pride” parades, gender transitions, and pronoun preferences. At issue before the Supreme Court in Mahmoud is “[w]hether public schools burden parents’ religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents’ religious convictions and without notice or opportunity to opt-out.”
Mahmoud v. Taylor
Controversy arose early in the 2022-23 school year in Montgomery County, Maryland, when the board added over 22 storybooks with LGBTQ+ themes to its English language arts curriculum promoting transgender ideology and encouraging gender transitioning. Among the materials the parents challenged is Pride Puppy!, the sole text expressly approved for use with three- and four-year-olds in pre-K and Head Start classes. The book depicts a family whose puppy gets lost at an LGBTQ+-pride parade while devoting a page to each letter of the alphabet in celebrating pride day. The related assignment has children locating words such as “[drag] queen” and “king,” “leather,” “lip ring,” and “intersex”.
Other disputed books “include stories about a same-sex marriage, a “transgender” child’s rainbow-colored wig, and elementary school students replacing girl/boy bathroom markers with non-binary signs.”
Educators initially told parents they would provide them with advanced notice and allow opt-outs from instruction using the book on family life and sexuality. A day later, however, they changed their minds and refused to do so. Consequently, as the dissent noted at the Fourth Circuit, the policy officials applied failed to meet the constitutional standard of being neutral and generally applicable because under it “other [unnamed] religious opt-out requests are still allowed; just not for those opposed to the content of the [disputed] texts.
The federal trial court in Maryland and a divided Fourth Circuit, over a strong dissent, rejected the parental claims. The courts largely agreed, most notably, that officials did not violate the parents’ free exercise rights or undermine the values they sought to instill in their children by denying them the opportunity to opt their young out of the instruction they found objectionable. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represented the plaintiffs in their appeal to the Supreme Court which agreed to hear oral arguments during the spring of 2025.
The actions of public school officials in Mahmoud and elsewhere unilaterally promoting such ideological instruction while ignoring parental concerns indicates that they are engaged in “social experiments on other people’s children.”
The actions of officials in Mahmoud are especially troublesome because they are out of touch with reasonable and prevailing standards. For example, thirty-eight jurisdictions, including Maryland and the District of Columbia, require educators to offer parental opt-outs, six combine opt-outs and opt-ins, and four obligate parents to opt-in affirmatively to allow their children to receive such sexuality instruction. Three jurisdictions are silent on opt-outs but do not ban such policies.
The board’s reply brief in Mahmoud opposing the appeal to the Supreme Court highlights educators’ disregard for parents in arguing that their concern over exposing children to age-inappropriate sexualized material “does not raise a pressing issue of national importance.” The board’s brief added that the plaintiffs are asking the “Court to intervene on the false pretense that parents have been denied a right to opt their children out of sex education,” claiming “that the storybooks are part of language-arts instruction, not sex education.” The brief ignored that the age-inappropriate content violated parental rights to direct the education of their children as officials promoted sex education under the pretense of language arts.
In light of the actions of officials in Mahmoud in imposing such highly sexualized curricular materials on young children, combined with the Supreme Court’s record of protecting religious freedom, the Justices are likely to find in favor of the parents. The Justices illustrated their commitment to religious freedom broadly since 2016 in upholding the rights of institutions and believers not to be denied generally available aid whether in the form of grants to enhance playground protection in a pre-school childcare facility, to participate in an educational tax credit program, and to receive tuition assistance in districts lacking public secondary schools.
The Court has also safeguarded individuals’ rights to religious freedom not to be compelled to provide professional services communicating messages inconsistent with their beliefs or to have to work on their Sabbaths.
It is imperative that the Supreme Court continue to protect religious freedom by upholding the free exercise rights of parents to opt their young out of age-inappropriate instruction, inconsistent with the beliefs they wish to instill in their children. By entering a judgment in favor of the parents in Mahmoud, the Justices will fittingly restore the principle it enunciated in Pierce a century ago in acknowledging that parents, rather than educators in public schools, have “the high duty to…prepare [their children] for additional obligations.”
The Supreme Court is expected to hand down its judgment before the end of its current term early this summer.
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This is yet another clear and concise excellent discussion of critically important parental rights pertaining to the education of their young. The basis for parental decisions as to opting their children either in or out of any particular curriculum certainly should include their sincerely held religious beliefs. I am of the opinion that it should not be limited to sincerely held religious beliefs, but also include sincerely held non-religious beliefs. Professor Russo is quite rightly deeply concerned about the scope and limits of religious liberty and education. Perhaps he also could enlighten us as to the scope and limits of non-religious liberty and education as well.