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New York Post
22-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Why mom joined Supreme Court lawsuit over LGBTQ+ books in elementary school: ‘Emphasis on children's romantic emotions'
Controversy erupted in Maryland's largest public school district when it introduced more than 20 inclusivity books, some with LGBTQ+ themes, into its elementary schools. Most states, including Maryland, have laws in place that allow parents to choose whether their children attend sex education. However, Montgomery County school district has introduced the 'inclusivity' books in subjects such as Language Arts class, and school leaders said they would not offer the same opt out choices. Hundreds of parents from multiple faith backgrounds have joined the case which has gone all the way to the Supreme Court. Advertisement Grace Morrison is part of the case through the Kids First organization. She explains why her family joined the lawsuit: 5 Grace Morrison pulled her daughter out of school and started homeschooling her when the 'opt-out' option became no more. Courtesy of Grace Morrison My husband and I have seven children. Our youngest daughter, who is now 12, we adopted from Ukraine as an infant. She has Down syndrome so she has special needs. Advertisement We started her in the Montgomery County school system and she continued there until she was 10 years old. We started homeschooling her in 2023 after our local school board introduced a new set of 'inclusivity' books for pre-K through fifth-grade students. Instead of teaching universal lessons about kindness and respect, these books push polarizing views on gender and sexuality while placing an unusual emphasis on children's romantic emotions. I was told one book that would be presented in her classroom was called Pride Puppy where children going to a pride parade get an alphabetical list of things to look for, like the 'intersex flag,' a 'drag queen,' 'leather,' and a controversial LGBTQ activist. They were way too advanced and sensitive for children as young as three. 5 Hundreds of parents are fighting the district's decision to not offer the ability to 'opt-out'. Becket Advertisement Another book they presented [Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope] was about a little boy who decided he was trans and wanted to become a girl and how his whole family supported him and made him a pink wig. It was telling young readers that the decision to transition doesn't need to 'make sense.' To be presenting those ideas to children, especially those with special needs, I can't imagine what confusion that causes. But the school sent out a notice saying we would no longer have the option to opt out. I was concerned for two reasons: we are in the Catholic faith and opposed to that; and it was not appropriate to her age or her needs. Until this point we had a great relationship with the teachers, it was very respectful and we worked very well together. I found out from a teacher these materials would be presented in a Language Arts class. It was not just a simple class – it involved teaching. 5 Jeff and Svitlana Roman are also part of the lawsuit and wanted their son to opt out of certain teachings in the 'inclusivity' books due to their Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox beliefs. Becket Advertisement 5 parents claim they should not be placed in a position where their only alternative to instruction which offends their religious values is to take their children out of public school. Becket Maryland, like forty-seven other states, mandates parental notification for Family Life and Human Sexuality classes and allows parents to opt their children out of these lessons. But because these books are tucked into a Language Arts program, somehow they believe it doesn't require the parents being notified. I reached out to the principal and was told they adhere to Montgomery County's policy and if I was not comfortable, this was not a place for my child and to find another school…so we removed our daughter. I got involved as a board member for Kids First – the organization challenging the school board's policies in federal court. It's a diverse group of parents and teachers from all faith backgrounds including Catholic, Muslim and Jewish. Today, we take our fight — the case 'Mahmoud v. Taylor' — to the Supreme Court, asking for the restoration of our fundamental right to guide our child's education in alignment with our faith. 5 Another of the parents in the case, Billy Moges, pictured doing homework with her daughters. Moges is the director of Kids First, which argues parents should have more of a choice in what their kids are learning at school. Becket Every child deserves to experience the innocence of childhood, with their parents playing a central role in guiding them through such complex and sensitive subjects introduced in the classroom. Our daughter brings great joy to our family. But this sudden change in our family life and routine was unexpected and has cost us a lot. We've had to adapt both financially and in our day-to-day living. I would hope that someday I could return my daughter to public school so she would have the benefits of being with a lot of other children and the services provided through schools. Advertisement It was very confusing to her in the beginning because other children in the neighborhood still get on the school bus that she's no longer getting on. But I think she's adapting fine. There are ways to teach love and respect and tolerance but not to remove parents from the equation because the school thinks they can do it better. This is a majority issue — not a transphobic, homophobic or discriminatory issue — and this is about parents being parents and deciding what is best for the children.
Boston Globe
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Supreme Court signals support for Maryland parents who object to LGBTQ books in public schools
'I'm surprised this is the hill to die on in terms of not respecting religious liberty,' Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, citing the county's diverse population and Maryland's history as a haven for Catholics. The county school board introduced the storybooks as part of an effort to better reflect the district's diversity. Advertisement Parents sued after the school system stopped allowing them to pull their kids from lessons that included the books. The parents argue that public schools cannot force kids to participate in instruction that violates their faith, and they pointed to the opt-out provisions in sex education classes. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The schools said allowing children to opt out of the lessons had become disruptive. Lower courts backed the schools, prompting the parents' appeal to the Supreme Court. Five books are at issue in the high court case, touching on the same themes found in classic stories that include Snow White, Cinderella and Peter Pan, the school system's lawyers wrote. In 'Prince and Knight,' two men fall in love after they rescue the kingdom, and each other. In 'Uncle Bobby's Wedding,' a niece worries that her uncle will not have as much time for her after he gets married. His partner is a man. Advertisement 'Love, Violet' deals with a girl's anxiety about giving a valentine to another girl. 'Born Ready' is the story of a transgender boy's decision to share his gender identity with his family and the world. 'Intersection Allies' describes nine characters of varying backgrounds, including one who is gender-fluid. Billy Moges, a board member of the Kids First parents' group that sued over the books, said the content is sexual, confusing and inappropriate for young schoolchildren. The writers' group Pen America said in a court filing what the parents want is 'a constitutionally suspect book ban by another name.' Pen America reported more than 10,000 books were banned in the last school year. A decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor is expected by early summer.
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
US supreme court weighs efforts to exempt elementary schoolers from LGBTQ+ books
The US supreme court is considering on Tuesday a bid by Christian and Muslim parents in Maryland to keep their elementary school children out of certain classes when storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters are read in the latest case involving the intersection of religion and LGBTQ+ rights. The justices are hearing arguments in an appeal by parents with children in public schools in Montgomery county, located just outside of Washington, after lower courts declined to order the local school district to let children opt out when these books are read. The plaintiffs – including Muslim, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox parents – contend that the school board's policy of prohibiting opt-outs violates the US constitution's first amendment protections for free exercise of religion. The supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has steadily expanded the rights of religious people in recent years, including in cases involving LGBTQ+ people. For instance, the court in 2023 ruled that certain businesses have a right under the first amendment's free speech protections to refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings. The Montgomery country district in 2022 approved a handful of storybooks that feature lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters as part of its English language arts curriculum in order to better represent the diversity of families in the county, the district said in court filings. The storybooks do not instruct about gender or sexuality and are available for teachers to use 'alongside the many books already in the curriculum that feature heterosexual characters in traditional gender roles', the district said. Opt-outs are still allowed by the district for sex education units of health classes. As the district found the number of requests to excuse students from classes in which these storybooks were read logistically unworkable, it announced in 2023 a policy barring opt-outs from instruction using the storybooks. Represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty conservative legal group, the parents who have sued include Tamer Mahmoud, Enas Barakat, Chris Persak, Melissa Persak, Jeff Roman and Svitlana Roman, along with an organization called Kids First that seeks opt-out rights in Montgomery county. The plaintiffs said in their lawsuit that the storybooks 'promote one-sided transgender ideology, encourage gender transitioning and focus excessively on romantic infatuation – with no parental notification or opportunity to opt out'. The Richmond, Virginia-based fourth US circuit court of appeals in 2024 denied their bid for a preliminary injunction, saying that at this early stage of the case there is no evidence that the storybooks are 'being implemented in a way that directly or indirectly coerces the parents or their children to believe or act contrary to their religious faith'. The plaintiffs told the supreme court that the fourth circuit's decision undermines the right of parents to 'protect their children's innocence and direct their religious upbringing'. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion The district emphasized in a brief to the court that no parent or child is coerced to alter their religious convictions or practices, and that mere exposure to content that parents find religiously objectionable does not violate the first amendment. The Freedom From Religion Foundation secularism advocacy group in a filing to the supreme court supporting the school board said: 'Parents should not have the constitutional right to micromanage their children's education to ensure that all secular education materials conform with their personal religious beliefs.' Such a rule would be boundless because 'almost any book or idea – however commonplace or innocent – likely contradicts some religious ideals,' the group said. In a brief backing the parents in the case, a group of religious liberty scholars wrote that the supreme court should correct the 'widespread failure of the lower courts to understand the burden on parental religious rights that can result from mandatory school instruction on highly fraught topics'. The supreme court is expected to rule by the end of June. The justices are poised to decide multiple cases involving religious rights this term. Next week, it will hear a major case involving a bid to establish in Oklahoma the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school.
Boston Globe
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Supreme Court story time: Justices consider children's books with LGBTQ+ themes
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland's largest school system, added the books in 2022 to the curriculum for students from prekindergarten through fifth grade. The school system's list included, its lawyers told the justices, 'a handful of storybooks featuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer characters for use in the language-arts curriculum, alongside the many books already in the curriculum that feature heterosexual characters in traditional gender roles.' Advertisement At first, the Montgomery school system gave parents notice when the storybooks were to be discussed, along with the opportunity to have their children excused from those sessions. But the school system soon eliminated the advanced notice and opt-out policy, saying it was hard to administer, led to absenteeism, and risked 'exposing students who believe the storybooks represent them and their families to social stigma and isolation.' Advertisement Parents of several faiths sued, saying the books violated the First Amendment's protection of the free exercise of religion. The books, their complaint said, 'promote one-sided transgender ideology, encourage gender transitioning and focus excessively on romantic infatuation.' The parents said they did not seek to remove the books from school libraries and classrooms but only to shield their children from having to discuss them. (The school system has since withdrawn two of the seven books, including 'Pride Puppy.' In court papers, officials said the books had been reevaluated under standard procedures but did not elaborate.) Billy Moges, a member of Kids First, an association of parents and teachers that is a plaintiff in the case, said in an interview that the books were 'teaching things that are exactly in contradiction with what we believe in.' 'It steals their innocence,' she said of the impact the books have on children. 'It destroys the foundation that they have, the structure of who they are, in God and in our faith. And it just makes absolutely no sense. It just defies common sense.' Moges said she has withdrawn her three young children from public schools and has sent them to a private one that she helped found that would, she said, 'not brainwash kids with these ideas.' Still, she said, 'I want to send my kids back to Montgomery County schools because we don't have the resources that they do.' Jodie Patterson, author of 'Born Ready,' said she was flummoxed by the controversy. 'My initial reaction was, 'My little book? How is that harming anyone?'' Advertisement Her book, about a transgender boy who wins a karate tournament with the support of his family and a school principal, was well received when it was published in 2021. Kirkus Reviews said it 'shines with joy and affirmation' and amounted to 'a triumphant declaration of love and identity.' On reflection, Patterson said she felt the parents' objections amounted to erasing the experiences of some families. 'When certain religions and certain religious people say, 'This is not appropriate for my religion,'' she said, 'it's problematic.' 'Not because I don't want to respect people's religions,' she went on, 'but because reading stories about children who are different is fundamental.' In recent cases, the Supreme Court has expanded the role of religion in public life, sometimes at the expense of other values such as gay rights. The court has ruled in favor of a web designer who said she did not want to create sites for same-sex marriages, a high school football coach who said he had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team's games, and a Catholic social services agency in Philadelphia that said it could defy city rules and refuse to work with same-sex couples who had applied to take in foster children. Some legal scholars said that accepting the logic of the Maryland parents' arguments would have broad consequences for the ability of public schools to manage their curricula, citing cases in which parents unsuccessfully challenged course materials on evolution and the big bang theory, and storybooks about wizards and giants. 'The First Amendment does not shield public school students from the mere exposure to ideas that conflict with their personal views, whether secular or religious,' Justin Driver of Yale Law School and Eugene Volokh of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University wrote in a brief supporting the school system. Advertisement The school board, in its Supreme Court brief in the case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, No. 24-297, wrote that the dispute was based on a misunderstanding about what lessons students are intended to draw from the books. 'The storybooks themselves do not instruct about gender or sexuality,' the brief said. 'They are not textbooks. They merely introduce students to characters who are LGBTQ or have LGBTQ family members, and those characters' experiences and points of view.' The books supplement rather than replace other children's stories such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Goldilocks, which, the brief noted, also depict families, communities, and relationships. This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Supreme Court Weighs Whether Parents Have Right to Opt Out of LGBTQ Lessons
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday will consider whether one of the nation's largest school districts violated parents' First Amendment right to religious freedom when it stopped allowing them to opt their children out of LGBTQ-themed lessons. A group of parents sued the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, arguing that requiring children to sit through storybook readings on topics such as a Pride parade and a girl giving a Valentine to another girl offends their religious beliefs. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter 'We were forced to choose between God and education,' said Billy Moges, a Christian mother of three and a board member for Kids First, an advocacy group that formed to oppose the district's move. She pulled her children out of the school system when officials ended the opt-out policy and has since started a private Christian school, His Academy, that meets in a Silver Spring church. 'We're not asking for any special treatment,' she said. 'We're asking for our rights to be restored.' Regardless of who wins, the case will head back to the district court for further action. The appeal centers on parents' request to reinstate the opt-out policy until the district court can rule on whether the district violated their rights. But the court's conservative majority may also use the oral arguments to address the underlying facts, said Joshua Dunn, executive director of the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 'The school board didn't relent, and then compelled students to sit through these books being read,' he said. 'I just think that for some of the justices on the court, that's going to strike them as extraordinarily wrong-headed.' District officials say the books, intended for pre-K through third grade, were never intended to push views about sex and gender. The opt outs, they argue, became increasingly disruptive and contributed to absenteeism because some parents let their children skip the whole day if a lesson included one of the books. Opt-outs 'stigmatized LGBTQ students and students who have LGBTQ families,' said Aditi Fruitwala, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports the district. Reinstating the policy, she said, would 'undermine the entire purpose of a public education system, which is to create good citizens who can thrive in a society with people from a variety of backgrounds, faiths and cultures.' Related The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, illustrates the growing tension between inclusion and religious freedom. That's likely the reason the conservative-learning court agreed to hear the appeal, Fruitwala said. The parents who sued — Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox Christian — also have the Trump administration on their side: Solicitor General John Sauer will participate in the oral arguments. In a brief, the Department of Justice said the board's policy forces parents to be in 'dereliction of their religious duties' by sending their children to public school. Twenty-six Republican-led states and 66 members of Congress also support the parents. Over the past few years, confrontations over these issues have escalated in districts across the country. In February, parents in the Penfield, New York, district, near Rochester, objected to the district's use of The Rainbow Parade, a picture book about a young girl and her two mothers attending a Pride parade. Nationally, the public leans in favor of schools allowing parents to opt their children out of lessons about sexual orientation and gender identity. Fifty-four percent agreed with that view in a Pew Research poll last year, but the partisan divide was stark: Support for opt outs was 79% among Republicans, compared with 32% among Democrats. Despite clashes over such materials from California to Michigan, both sides of the conflict agree that Montgomery County offers an especially apt setting for the debate. The county is one of the most religiously diverse in the nation, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. Will Haun, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents the parents, said it's 'astonishing,' that such a district would abandon the longstanding practice of accommodating parents' opt-out requests. Related Fruitwala said the district's rich religious and ethnic diversity is precisely why the books belong in the curriculum. District leaders, she said, have an 'opportunity to incorporate books from a wide variety of cultures and perspectives and backgrounds that reflect the families in the school district.' The 160,000-student district's effort to bring more diversity to its reading program began in 2022-23, when the school board voted to add six books featuring LGBTQ characters. Officials said they chose the titles for the same reasons they would add any storybooks to the curriculum — to teach sentence structure, word choice and style. In a brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the National Education Association and its Maryland and Montgomery County affiliates highlighted comments from teachers that demonstrated students' eager response to the books. A veteran second grade teacher relayed what happened when she read My Rainbow, a picture book about a mother who makes a rainbow-colored wig for her transgender daughter. 'Upon hearing the words, 'I'm a transgender girl,' one of the children in my class called out, 'That's like my sister!' This child felt seen,' the teacher said, according to the brief. Ignoring LGBTQ families, district leaders say, puts schools at risk of violating state laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The Fourth Circuit ruled that refusing to allow children to opt out of the readings put no burden on religious parents. That's when the families appealed to the Supreme Court. They argue that since the district permits families to opt their children out of sex education, under a state law, that choice should extend to books that represent LGBTQ themes in other subjects. 'All the school board had to do,' Haun said, 'was simply recharacterize sexuality and gender instruction as English language arts and they get out of a long-standing national consensus that allows parents to opt their children out of that kind of instruction.' Last fall, the district removed two of the books in question — My Rainbow and Pride Puppy!, a rhyming alphabet book about a puppy that runs off during a Pride parade. But Rev. Rachel Cornwell, a Methodist minister who has two students in Montgomery County schools, said she wouldn't be surprised if the district was forced to remove all of the storybooks. She wishes the parents would suggest different books rather than leave the district. 'I think the vast majority of people in Montgomery County support the inclusion of these books into the curriculum,' she said. 'These are not books about sex. They are books about people's lives and about the diversity of our community.' Related As the mother of a transgender son, she said she and other LGBTQ families want their children to feel like they belong. 'We're not trying to indoctrinate anybody or say this is right or wrong,' she said. 'That's for you to have a conversation about with your kid at home.'
