SCOTUS: Parents can opt kids out of classes with LGBTQ book characters

Wading into another culture clash, the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that school systems, for now, are required to provide parents with an “opt-out” provision that excuses their children from class when course material conflicts with their religious beliefs.

The vote was 6-3, along ideological lines.

The court’s decision has, for months, had public school boards, administrators, and teachers worried about how to navigate opt-out demands of all kinds—from courses that include LGBTQ characters in books to science classes that teach Darwin’s theory of evolution.

At the center of Friday’s case was the Montgomery County, Md., school system, the most religiously diverse county in the nation, with 160,000 students of nearly all faiths. A group of parents sued the school board, seeking to opt their elementary school children out of classes when the reading material included books with LGBTQ characters. The parents argued that without an opt-out provision, their First Amendment religious freedoms were violated.

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Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito agreed, saying parents challenging the board’s introduction of the “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt-outs, are allowed to excuse their children from the classes related to the books while the litigation proceeds.

“The parents are likely to succeed on their claim that the Board’s policies unconstitutionally burden their religious exercise,” Alito wrote. He said the storybooks conveyed a “normative message” that seeks to separate gender from biological sex, contrary to their parents’ religious beliefs.

Writing for the three liberal justices, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the majority of seeking to insulate children from the United States’ multicultural society in its public schools, something that is “critical to our Nation’s civic vitality.”

“Yet it will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs,” she wrote.

The school board, backed by other parents, had argued that opt-out provisions were impractical. The board noted that it initially allowed parents to opt their children out of select lesson plans. But, the school system removed the opt-out provision when accommodating requests became too difficult and disruptive to class time. The board argued that while it is easy enough to facilitate single-class opt-outs, as the school district provides for sex education, it is much more challenging to take children from the classroom every time that a book mentions same sex parents or gay and lesbian kids.

But parents objecting to the storybooks maintained that the Supreme Court has long held that parents should be in charge of value-setting for their children and that forcing children to read LGBTQ-friendly storybooks, against their parents’ wishes, violated families’ First Amendment rights to religious freedoms.