Parental Rights Don’t Disappear Because Schools Get Annoyed

The Supreme Court Must Defend Parental Rights in Mahmoud v. Taylor

The Supreme Court heard arguments last week in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case that asks a simple question with enormous consequences: Do parents have the right to opt their children out of lessons that contradict their religious beliefs?

At the heart of the case is school curriculum in Montgomery County, Maryland, where public schools introduced a set of LGBT-themed books to students as young as four years old. These are not biology or health education materials. They are storybooks, some featuring romantic same-sex plotlines, others promoting transgender identity to children still learning to read. There is a world of difference between teaching teenagers to think critically and expecting kindergartners to process concepts like same-sex romance or gender transition. These are formative years, and the line between education and indoctrination is thinnest when children are too young to question what they are told. These materials are not neutral. They are loaded with ideology, presented as moral fact and delivered without context or room for dissent.

When parents asked to opt out, the school district said no. The opt-out policy, once available, was revoked. The message was clear: If your faith tells you something different from what the district is teaching, that is your problem and your child will sit through it anyway.

The district claims that honoring opt-out requests would place too heavy a burden on schools, making it impractical to offer alternatives. But constitutional rights do not vanish simply because they are inconvenient for administrators. If respecting freedom of conscience becomes optional whenever it causes paperwork or scheduling challenges, then those freedoms are meaningless. The burden of protecting individual rights has always rested on the government, not the governed. That burden is not a flaw in our system. It is the cost of living in a country that respects diverse convictions over coercion.

This is not about teaching children to respect differences. It is about the state deciding which values are acceptable to believe and using the classroom to enforce that judgment on children before they are old enough to push back.

Books like Prince & Knight, Love, Violet and Born Ready do not simply present characters with different identities. They portray romantic relationships, gender transitions and ideological claims about sex and identity as good, brave and beyond question. For many religious families, these are not just controversial themes. They are teachings that directly contradict what is taught at home, in church and in conscience.

Opting out does not mean removing the book from the school curriculum. It does not mean shutting down discussion or denying anyone else access. It simply means giving families the dignity to say, "This lesson crosses a line for us, and we would prefer our child not be part of it." That is not disruption. It is accommodation. It is how a free society balances competing convictions without coercion.

The Supreme Court has long recognized that parents are the primary educators of their children. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the Court affirmed that "the child is not the mere creature of the State," and that parents, not the government, hold the right to direct their children's upbringing. That principle has stood for nearly a century. Now, it is being quietly hollowed out under the name of inclusion.

If the Court rules against the parents, the consequences will not stop with these books. If the state can compel your child to absorb teachings on sexuality that violate your faith, where are the limits? Could it one day force participation in political reeducation programs? Could it compel attendance at clinics or workshops that directly oppose a family's religious or moral beliefs? When parental rights are treated as administrative inconveniences, they cease to be rights at all.

This precedent would give license to districts anywhere to mandate moral and ideological content of any kind, with no regard for the convictions of the families they serve. Today it is gender identity. Tomorrow it might be partisan narratives about race, politics or history. Once the state gains unrestricted power to shape what your child is taught about right and wrong, your rights become conditional, and conditional rights are no rights at all.

Tolerance does not mean forcing every family to agree. It means allowing space for peaceful disagreement, space for faith, conscience and conviction to coexist in a diverse society. When the government closes that space, it is not fostering unity. It is imposing orthodoxy.

This case is not about tolerance; it is about control. It is not about books; it is about boundaries. If the Supreme Court gets this wrong, the state will not just be in the classroom. It will be in the living room, too. Americans need to remind schools that they work for us and not the other way around. If we don’t stand up now, they’ll take our silence as surrender.