Supreme Court Allows Parents to Opt Children Out of LGBTQ+ School Curricula, Expanding Religious Liberty Protections

The Supreme Court sided in a Friday ruling with a group of Maryland parents seeking to opt their children out of school curricula that featured LGBTQ+ characters and themes, marking an expansion of religious liberty protections. 

The parents argued that the school board violated their rights to practice their religion under the First Amendment by rescinding measures that allowed them to opt their children out of discussions involving LGBTQ+ storybooks. The books were not used for classroom instruction on gender and sexuality. 

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In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the nation’s highest court agreed with the parents and ruled that schools cannot require children to participate in lessons involving books that their parents object to on religious grounds. "We have long recognized," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion, “the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children. And we have held that those rights are violated by government policies that substantially interfere with the religious development of children.”

Alito’s fellow conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice John Roberts also sided with parents in the case.

President Donald Trump celebrated the decision on Friday.

“That ruling was a great ruling. It’s a great ruling for parents. They lost control of the schools, they lost control of their child, and this is a tremendous victory for parents,” he said.

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The case comes as a growing number of states have moved to implement “Don’t Say Gay” laws  barring mentions of LGBTQ+ people or history in schools. Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas are among those that have enacted LGBTQ-specific school censorship laws, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Books related to the topic have also become the subject of mounting bans across the U.S.: More than 10,000 book bans were recorded for the 2023-24 school year, a quarter of which featured LGBTQ+ characters, according to PEN America.  

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the parents in the case, previously told TIME that it would not cause “a seismic shift throughout our country.” But advocates for LGBTQ+ rights and other critics of the lawsuit expressed concerns that the court’s decision could enable school districts to censor school curricula or other discussions that mention the LGBTQ+ community. 

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The liberal justices of the court expressed similar worries. “The reverberations of the Court’s error will be felt, I fear, for generations. Unable to condone that grave misjudgement, I dissent,” wrote Justices Sonia Sotomayor in a dissenting opinion. Fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined her dissent.