By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a bid by religious parents to keep their children out of classes in a Maryland public school district when LGBT storybooks are read, the latest case to come to the justices involving the intersection between religion and LGBT rights.
The justices took up an appeal by parents with children in Montgomery County Public Schools, just outside of Washington, after lower courts denied a request by the plaintiffs for a preliminary injunction ordering the district to allow the children to opt out when these books are read.
The lower courts rejected the argument by the plaintiffs that the school district likely was violating the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections for free exercise of religion.
The plaintiffs objected to exposing their elementary school-aged children to instruction that they said conflicts with their Roman Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox and Muslim religious beliefs.
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 LGBT people. In 2023, for the instance, court 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 Maryland school district in 2022 approved a handful of storybooks that feature lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters “alongside the many books already in the curriculum that feature heterosexual characters in traditional gender roles.”
The books are part of the language-arts curriculum, not sex education, the district said, and include no instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity.
“The storybooks are no more sex education than stories like Cinderella and Snow White, which feature romance between men and women,” the district said in court papers.
As the number of requests to excuse students from these classes multiplied, the district in 2023 announced a policy barring opt-outs from instruction using the storybooks. Opt-outs are still allowed for sex education units of health classes.
Represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty conservative legal group, the parents who sued included 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 Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. 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 4th Circuit’s decision undermines the right of parents to “protect their children’s innocence and direct their religious upbringing.”
It was not clear whether the case will be argued during the current term.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
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