By Matthew Vadum via the Epoch Times (emphasis on us),
On Jan. 17, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a request from a group of Maryland parents to stop reading storybooks promoting the LGBT lifestyle from their young children.
The court granted the petition in Mahmoud v. Taylor in unsigned order. No judges disagreed, and the court did not explain its decision.
The petition was filed Sept. 12, 2024, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected a parent’s request for an injunction to suspend the Montgomery County Board of Education’s policy of promoting books.
The case goes back to November 2022, when the board mandated new LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks for elementary school students that promote gender transitions, Pride parades and same-sex romance between young children.
The board instructed employees responsible for selecting the books to use an “LGBTQ+ lens” and ask if “cisnormativity,” “stereotypes” and “power hierarchies” were “reinforced or disrupted,” the petition said.
Parents were initially told they could give up on behalf of their children if storybooks were read, according to the petition. The Board changed its policy in March 2023. As of the 2023-2024 school year, the opt-out policy would no longer apply.
“If parents didn’t like what their elementary school children were taught, their only choice was to send them to a private school or homeschooling,” the statement said.
Hundreds of parents, mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians and Muslims, appeared at board meetings and testified that their respective religions require that young children not be exposed to teachings about gender and sexuality that are inconsistent with their religion.
After “parents emphasized how impressive young children are and how they lack the independent judgment to deal with such complex and sensitive issues,” board members accused parents of promoting “hatred” and compared them to “white supremacists” and “xenophobes,” according to the petition.
The parents sued after the board refused to accommodate them, arguing that they had a constitutional right to opt out of such instruction.
On August 24, 2023, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman rejected a parent’s request for an injunction to block the cancellation of the opt-out policy.
On May 15, 2024, the divisional Fourth District Division upheld the decision, finding that the parents had failed to demonstrate that the injunction was justified. The panel added that it would not take a position on whether the parents would be able to present sufficient evidence later in the proceedings for their case to be successful.
The panel also found that there was no evidence that the policy change was a burden on parents’ right to religious freedom.
Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel for the Becket Religious Freedom Foundation, which represents the parents, welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case.
“Suppressing a controversial gender ideology for 3-year-olds without the permission of their parents is an affront to our nation’s traditions, parental rights, and elementary human decency.”
“The court needs to make it clear: parents, not the state, should be the ones who decide how and when to introduce their children to sensitive issues of gender and sexuality,” she said in a statement.
It’s not clear when the Supreme Court will hear the case.
The Epoch Times reached out to an attorney for the Montgomery County Board of Education, Wilmer Alan Schoenfeld, New York Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr for comment. No reply was received at the time of publication.
