The famously liberal school district, perhaps, could have continued unabated in asking children as young as 3, 4 and 5 years old to match words and phrases like “leather,” “underwear” and “drag queen” with their respective illustrations in the children's book “Pride Puppy!”
But they did not. So the high court last week heard oral arguments in a lawsuit presented by parents who said they were not fighting over the content but over the fundamental right to be the parent rather than the school teacher.
Montgomery County Public Schools, having removed the ability for religiously convicted parents to have their children “opt-out,” now demands the presence of the children.
The school board introduced their “LGBTQ inclusive texts” including for grades as low as kindergarten and pre-K at the start of the 2022-2023 school year.
When it happened, parents could choose to remove their children from those lessons
.However, the school district changed course for unknown reasons, Colton Stansbury, of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said on Washington Watch Monday.
After witnessing oral arguments last week, he's optimistic that a Supreme Court majority will rule in favor of the parents.
“On the one hand, there's some evidence to say like some parents that hold views that the books are good things were upset that other parents were allowed to opt out,” Stansbury said.
During the course of litigation, the school district began to say there were too many opt-outs to handle.
“That seems a little absurd given that the school district handles opt-outs in a number of other contexts they've had before this case,” many of them religious in nature, Stansbury said.
“It wasn't until parents started opting out of these books specifically that they changed course,” he added.
Whatever the motivation, the school district has demanded that all children be present for LGBTQ inclusivity lessons with or without religious objection.
Now the Becket case, a cultural rarity, represents parents of Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths at one time.
The parents are not asking to control what’s taught in the schools, Stansbury said. They’re asking for the freedom to have their children leave at very limited and specific times.
“If teachers and people of authority are going to stand in front of a class and read from these books and provide instruction," the attorney argued, "our parents feel like they need to protect their children from the contents of those books, especially since the contents of those books at times conflict with their religious beliefs.”
Oral arguments showed the LGBTQ material is presented not in a spirit of neutrality but as what should be considered normal and even morally good.
Reading, guessing from oral arguments
Also coming to light was evidence that suggests school board officials made openly derogatory comments about parents who want to remove their children from these lessons.
When the opt-out option was removed, hundreds of parents protested.
“In response to some of those protesters and parents showing up at the meeting, one school board member said that a Muslim girl was just ‘parenting her parents' dogma.’ They compared the Muslims to xenophobes and white supremacists. There were some pretty blatantly derogatory statements made about these religious parents,” Stansbury said.
Reading the reactions of most justices in the oral arguments leaves Stansbury hopeful that religious liberty is about to gain a win.
“I think you saw some shock from members of the court, some of whom are residents of Montgomery County, saying, ‘Maryland as a state was founded on religious liberty, and this is exactly contrary to that teaching,’” he said.
