For over a hundred years, the United States Supreme Court has affirmed that parents have the right to make educational decisions that best fit their children’s interests and needs. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision today in Mahmoud v. Taylor builds upon this case law by holding that parents have a right to opt out of curriculum that interferes with their children’s religious development and imposes a burden on their free exercise of religion.
In one of the first cases of this nature, Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the Supreme Court struck down the Oregon Compulsory Education Act, which required every parent or guardian to send their children to a public school in their district. In a unanimous decision, the Court wrote that the Act “unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education [of their] children….” This landmark case established the rights of parents and guardians to enroll their children in private schools.
The Supreme Court reaffirmed parental rights nearly 50 years later in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), in which the state prosecuted three Amish parents who had stopped sending their children to school after the eighth grade. Wisconsin law required all children to attend public school until the age of 16, but the parents argued that sending their children to high school was against their religious beliefs. In a unanimous decision, the Court sided with the families and ruled that their free exercise rights outweighed the state’s compelling interest in the students attending school beyond the eighth grade.
In line with these cases, many states also allow families to decide whether or not to enroll their children in specific curricular options. For example, the majority of states have ”opt-out” policies that allow parents to remove their children from sex education curriculum without penalty. The Mahmoud decision expands parental rights by permitting parents to opt out of any curriculum if it conflicts with their religious beliefs.
In 2022, Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland approved an inclusive book list for its K-5 English language arts curriculum, with some books featuring LGBTQ+ characters. Initially, the school board allowed parents to receive notice and opt their children out of lessons involving these books on the grounds of religious accommodations, but the district reversed this policy the following year. In response, a group of elementary school parents from different religious backgrounds sued the school board and superintendent, arguing that its actions violated their religious freedom and parental rights. The Supreme Court was asked to rule on whether “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?”
The Court was inclined to weigh in on this case because the circuit courts have recently disagreed on whether forced participation in public school instruction can create a First Amendment Free Exercise burden. While a majority of the circuit courts have established a standard that requires “direct coercion” or “compulsion” by a school, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that forcing an individual to participate in any activity that “offends his religious or nonreligious beliefs” could violate the Free Exercise clause. When two or more circuits in the U.S. Court of Appeals reach different decisions on the same legal issue, it’s considered a “circuit split,” meaning federal law is being applied differently in different parts of the country. The circuit split resolved by Mahmoud v. Taylor is one of the reasons the Supreme Court chose to hear the case.
The Montgomery County School District used the existing majority standard of “coercion” to defend itself in this case. The district argued that students were not compelled to change their religious beliefs as a result of the inclusion of LGBTQ+-themed books in the curriculum. In addition, the district cautioned that an opt-out policy would snowball, allowing parents to pick and choose what parts of the curriculum their children should be taught in all subject areas.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the parents and affirmed their right to opt their children out of curriculum or content that they assert is counter to their religious beliefs. In the majority opinion delivered by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court sided with the argument that mere exposure to material can be considered coercion since it introduces a set of values and beliefs that are contrary to one’s religious beliefs, and that is the standard that can be used for opting out.
In a dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, she noted that this decision will create administrative burdens for school and district leaders because previously, parents have only been able to opt out of specific lessons such as human sexuality and sexual education. Opting out of a part of a lesson in which a teacher is reading a book that parents may find objectionable means that teachers will now have to create plans for where to send students during that portion of the lesson and what students should be reading instead. The dissent also noted that this ruling could have a “chilling effect” on schools and the censorship of materials and curriculum.
While the Mahmoud ruling is focused on the rights of parents to make decisions that meet the needs of their children, it also calls into question what the role of a public education should be. Public schools, by their very nature, enroll students with a wide set of backgrounds and beliefs. For many students, schools serve as an important place to learn about ideas that might be different from their own. K-12 schools and districts across the country will now have to delicately balance curriculum design with parental rights and accommodations, while still ensuring that all students receive a high-quality education.
