The Supreme Court raided the way on Friday so that parents oppose the content in schools that consider objectable for religious reasons, a ruling that focuses on books with LGBTQ issues, but critics warned that it could “radically change” what public schools teach.
Key data
The Supreme Court ruled by 6 to 3 following partisan lines in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a dispute over the Montgomery County School District, Maryland, and their decision not to allow parents to opt for not exposing their children to children’s books with LGBTQ songs, based on the fact that it comes into conflict with their religion.
The court granted a court order that allows parents to exclude their children from books as the case progresses, and ruled that parents will finally prevail in the case.
The school district added several books with LGBTQ themes (as on a child who attends the same sex of his uncle and a dog that is lost in a pride parade) as part of a broader mission to diversify their instruction materials, and although the district initially allowed parents “Unfeasible.”
The parents, who are Muslims, Roman Catholics and Ukrainian Orthodox, sued the district, claiming that the impossibility of excluding their children from exposure to books violated their right to freedom of religious expression enshrined in the first amendment and forced them to “give up their right to direct the religious education of their children.”
Judge Samuel Alito, writing for the court, said that the religious freedoms of the parents were probably violated, arguing that the government “taxes the religious exercise of the parents when they require them to submit their children to an instruction that raises ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that parents wish to instill”, and governments “cannot condition the benefit of free public education instruction by parents ”.
The liberal judges of the Court disagreed with the decision, and Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the court ruling “will be chaos for public schools”, and although public schools “offer children of all religions and origins an education and an opportunity to practice life in our multicultural society, that experience” will become a mere memory if children must be isolated from the children that can conflict with the religious beliefs of their parents. ”
Main critic
“Today’s ruling threatens the very essence of public education. The Court, in effect, constitutes the power of parental veto on curricular decisions, which for a long time left in the hands of the democratic process and local administrators,” Sotomayor wrote in his discrepant opinion, to which the liberal judges Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote. “This decision dismantles our precedent of free exercise and threatens the fundamental premise of public schools: that children can meet to learn not the teachings of a particular faith, but a range of concepts and perspectives that reflect our whole society. Exposure to new ideas has always been a vital part of that project, so far.”
Tangent
The dispute on Montgomery County policies arises at a time when several states have already approved laws on instruction to children about sexual orientation and gender identity, and the right of parents to oppose it. The law of parents of parents in the education of Florida, known as “Do not say that you are gay”, was the most controversial when it was promulgated in 2022, but similar laws have also been promulgated that restrict said instruction or that give parents the right not to participate in it in Arkansas, Montana and Nuevo Hampshire. Texas also allows parents to exclude their children from any “objectable” content, while Arizona, Tennessee and Wyoming demand that parents, instead, “choose to participate” in any instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Key history
The parents who sued the Montgomery County went to the Supreme Court after the judges of the Courts of First Instance and Appeals failed in favor of the School District, thus blocking the efforts of the plaintiffs to exclude their children from the books with LGBTQ themes. The dispute over the policies of the district arises at a time when recent cultural wars have caused a stir in public education, since the objections of parents and republican legislators to instruction on issues such as the problems LGBTQ have caused prohibitions of books and laws such as Florida “do not say you are gay.” The Pen America Defense Group has accounted for almost 16,000 book prohibitions since 2021, a figure that, according to the group, is the highest since any period from macartism in the 1950s. Only during the 2023-2024 school year there were more than 10,000 book prohibitions, the highest registered year. The Trump Administration, which presented a letter in the case of Montgomery County urging the judges to support parents, has also requested broad changes, seeking to dismantle the Department of Education, while President Donald Trump has criticized LGBTQ rights and the policies of diversity, equity and inclusion. Some states with a Democratic majority have also approved measures in response to the new attacks on books and teaching in public schools, such as California and Illinois, where laws that prohibit the prohibition of books have been approved.
This article was originally published by Forbes Us.
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