The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments this week on whether parents can opt their children out of mandatory reading periods featuring LGBTQ books that violate their faith.
Parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, argued in their petition to the Supreme Court that the Montgomery County Board of Education is violating the families’ First Amendment rights.
The First Amendment “cannot do its work if free-exercise rights must be sacrificed by all who attend the nation’s public schools,” the petition reads. “New government-imposed orthodoxy about what children are ‘supposed’ to think about gender and sexuality is not a constitutional basis to sideline a child’s own parents.”
While the Board previously allowed religious exemptions to the storybook periods, the Board reversed its decision “with no explanation,” the petition states.
Last year, an appeals court found that the parents’ rights were not infringed because the school board had not forced students to change their religious beliefs.
Twenty-five attorneys general filed a brief in support of the parents’ petition. The attorneys general wrote that the inability to opt out of the LGBTQ reading conflicts with Maryland’s own state laws.
“Maryland has long required public schools to allow opt-outs from any instruction on ‘family life and human sexuality,'” the brief said. “The School Board cannot have a compelling interest in violating Maryland law.”
The Trump administration has also filed a brief in support of the case, arguing that the lower court’s ruling “overlooks that the relevant religious practices are parents’ sincere beliefs that sending their children to participate in the compelled classroom instruction at issue violates their religious obligations.”
“The Board compromises parents’ ability to act consistent with those beliefs regardless of whether their children feel pressured or coerced by the instruction,” the filing added.
