U.S. Supreme Court Weighs Right for Parents To Opt Their Children from LGBT Content
by Emmitt Barry, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear a case from Maryland parents who argue that public schools are violating their religious rights by denying them the ability to opt their children out of LGBTQ-related lessons.
The case challenges whether Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland violated the Constitution by not informing parents or allowing them to opt their elementary-aged children out of LGBT-themed story time, featuring books on gender identity, Pride parades, and same-sex relationships.
“We’re just saying if the school board is going to make that decision, let us have the chance to leave the classroom,” said Colten Stanberry, counsel at Becket and attorney for the parents, in an interview with Fox News Digital. “And so I think for my parent clients, they’re saying let us be the parents. Keep us involved in the school decision-making process. Don’t try to cut us out.”
Outside the Supreme Court, a coalition of Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim parents is expected to rally in support of what they call a basic, long-standing right: to be notified and to opt out.
Montgomery County initially allowed parents to opt out when it introduced its “inclusivity” reading program in 2022. The books, used with children as young as three, include Pride Puppy, which asks students to identify items like a “drag queen,” an “intersex flag,” and “leather,” and Born Ready, which promotes self-defined gender identity and questions the role of doctors in assigning sex at birth.
The lawsuit was filed the following spring after the school board reversed its decision to permit opt-outs, according to Michael O’Brien, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who spoke to the Washington Examiner.
“On March 22, 2023, [the board] publicly reaffirmed that notice and opt outs would continue. And then, literally overnight on March 23, 2023, the board posted on its website, without explanation, that the opt outs would now be barred and no notice would be afforded to parents when the instruction would take place,” O’Brien said.
The parents sued the school board, arguing that the lack of notice and opt-out options “violated the Free Exercise Clause by overriding their freedom to direct the religious upbringing of their children and by burdening their religious exercise via policies that are not neutral or generally applicable,” the petitioners wrote.
They cited the 1972 Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder, in which the Court ruled that a state law requiring children to attend school beyond eighth grade infringed on parents’ constitutional rights to guide their children’s religious upbringing under the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court agreed to take up the case in mid-January as part of its 2024-2025 term.
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