Supreme Court Will Consider If Maryland Parents Can Opt Children Out Of Pro-LGBT Storybooks

The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 15, 2025 Madalina Vassillu / The Epoch Times
ZEROHEDGE | Published January 20, 2025

The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 17 agreed to hear a request from a group of Maryland parents to opt their young children out of having storybooks that promote LGBT lifestyles read to them.

The court granted the petition in Mahmoud v. Taylor in an unsigned order. No justices dissented, and the court did not explain its decision.

The petition was filed on Sept. 12, 2024, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit turned away the parents’ request for an injunction to halt the Montgomery County Board of Education’s policy of promoting the books.

The case goes back to November 2022, when the board mandated new “LGBTQ-inclusive” storybooks for elementary school students that promote gender transitions, Pride parades, and same-sex romance between young children.

The board instructed employees responsible for selecting the books to use an “LGBTQ+ Lens” and to question whether “cisnormativity,” “stereotypes,” and “power hierarchies” are “reinforced or disrupted,” the petition said.

Parents were initially told they could opt out on behalf of their children when the storybooks were read, according to the petition. The board changed its policy in March 2023. Beginning with the 2023–2024 academic year, the opt-out policy would no longer be in effect.

“If parents did not like what was taught to their elementary school kids, their only choice was to send them to private school or to homeschool,” the petition said.

Hundreds of parents, largely Eastern Orthodox Christians and Muslims, showed up at board meetings and testified that their respective religions required that young children not be exposed to instruction on gender and sexuality that was inconsistent with their religion.

After “parents emphasized how impressionable young children are and how they lack independent judgment to process such complex and sensitive issues,” the board members accused parents of promoting “hate” and likened them to “white supremacists” and “xenophobes,” according to the petition.

The parents sued after the board declined to accommodate them, arguing that they had a constitutional right to opt out of such instruction.

On Aug. 24, 2023, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman denied the parents’ application for an injunction to block the cancellation of the opt-out policy.

A divided Fourth Circuit panel upheld the ruling on May 15, 2024, holding that the parents had failed to demonstrate that an injunction was justified. The panel added that it took no view as to whether the parents would be able to produce enough evidence later in the proceeding to succeed in their case.

The panel also found that there was no evidence that the policy change burdened the parents’ right to free exercise of religion.

Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the parents, welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to take the case.

“Cramming down controversial gender ideology on 3-year-olds without their parents’ permission is an affront to our nation’s traditions, parental rights, and basic human decency.

The Court must make clear: parents, not the state, should be the ones deciding how and when to introduce their children to sensitive issues about gender and sexuality,” he said in a statement.

It is unclear when the Supreme Court will hear the case.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the attorney for the Montgomery County Board of Education, Alan Schoenfeld of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale, and Dorr in New York City. No reply was received by publication time.

 

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SOURCE: www.zerohedge.com

RELATED: US Supreme Court to hear dispute over LGBT books in Maryland school district

The Supreme Court is pictured, in Washington
The Supreme Court is pictured, in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 21, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt/File Photo Purchase Licensing
REUTERS | Published January 20, 2025
Jan 17 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a bid by religious parents to keep their children out of classes in a Maryland public school district when LGBT storybooks are read, the latest case to come to the justices involving the intersection between religion and LGBT rights.
The justices took up an appeal by parents with children in Montgomery County Public Schools, just outside of Washington, after lower courts denied a request by the plaintiffs for a preliminary injunction ordering the district to allow the children to opt out when these books are read.
The lower courts rejected the argument by the plaintiffs that the school district likely was violating the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections for free exercise of religion.
The plaintiffs objected to exposing their elementary school-aged children to instruction that they said conflicts with their Roman Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox and Muslim religious beliefs.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has steadily expanded the rights of religious people in recent years, including in cases involving LGBT people. In 2023, for the instance, court ruled that certain businesses have a right under the First Amendment’s free speech protections to refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings.
The Maryland school district in 2022 approved a handful of storybooks that feature lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters “alongside the many books already in the curriculum that feature heterosexual characters in traditional gender roles.”
The books are part of the language-arts curriculum, not sex education, the district said, and include no instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity.
“The storybooks are no more sex education than stories like Cinderella and Snow White, which feature romance between men and women,” the district said in court papers.
As the number of requests to excuse students from these classes multiplied, the district in 2023 announced a policy barring opt-outs from instruction using the storybooks. Opt-outs are still allowed for sex education units of health classes.
Represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty conservative legal group, the parents who sued included Tamer Mahmoud, Enas Barakat, Chris Persak, Melissa Persak, Jeff Roman and Svitlana Roman, along with an organization called Kids First that seeks opt-out rights in Montgomery County.
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2024 denied their bid for a preliminary injunction, saying that at this early stage of the case there is no evidence that the storybooks are “being implemented in a way that directly or indirectly coerces the parents or their children to believe or act contrary to their religious faith.”

 

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SOURCE: www.reuters.com

 

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