CNN
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For Billy Moges, the fight with a Washington, DC-area school district over the reading of LGBTQ+ books in elementary school is a matter of faith.
“We have no hate for anyone,” said Moges, one of the Christian parents who sued Maryland’s largest school district over the policy in a case that will be heard at the Supreme Court. “We’re saying that we, as parents, do not want our children to be exposed to these ideas at this age because they’re not ready for it.”
But for the Montgomery County Public Schools and civil rights groups, giving way to Moges would lead to an administrative nightmare – requiring teachers to foresee and alert parents to any concept discussed in the classroom that might possibly conflict with their religious beliefs.
The Supreme Court will weigh those positions during arguments Tuesday in the most significant religious appeal the justices have confronted in years – a case that sweeps in the struggle over transgender rights, the ability of parents to influence school curriculum and questions about the role of faith in the public sphere.
The parents are relying in part on a 1972 precedent in which the Supreme Court allowed Amish families to remove their children from school after the eighth grade, despite a Wisconsin law that required students to remain enrolled until they were 16.
The 6-3 conservative Supreme Court has sided with religious interests in every case it has considered in recent years – allowing a high school football coach to pray on the 50-yard line, permitting taxpayer money to be spent on religious schools and backing a Catholic foster care agency that refused to work with same-sex couples as potential parents.
Moges, who created a group called Kids First to organize opposition to the district’s book policy, stresses that she’s not asking the schools to stop reading the material – only to allow parents with religious objections to opt their students out. Most states, including Maryland, already have laws in place allowing parents to pull their children from sex education, for instance.
Montgomery County schools originally permitted opt-outs, but later concluded they were “unworkable.”
“Some schools, for example, experienced unsustainably high numbers of absent students,” the district told the justices in a brief this month. “The need to shuttle students in and out of the classroom would, moreover, disrupt those classrooms.”
A prince and a knight
As part of its English curriculum, Montgomery County approved a handful of books in 2022 at issue in the case. One, “Prince & Knight,” tells the story of a prince who does not want to marry any of the princesses in his realm. After teaming up with a knight to slay a dragon, the two fall in love, “filling the king and queen with joy,” according to the school’s summary.
Another, “Born Ready,” tells the story of Penelope, a character who likes skateboarding and wearing baggy jeans. When Penelope tells his mother that he is a boy, he is accepted. When Penelope’s brother questions his gender identity, their mother hugs both children and whispers, “Not everything needs to make sense. This is about love.”
The school district told the court that the books are used like any other in the curriculum: Placed on shelves for students to find and available for teachers to incorporate into reading groups or read-alouds at their discretion.
Moges and other parents who oppose the policy balk at the notion the books aren’t in active use.
“This has never been a case about books on the shelf,” said Michael O’Brien, counsel at the religious legal organization Becket, which is representing the parents.
The Richmond-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the schools 2-1 last year, ruling that the record on how the books were being used was too scant at the early stage of litigation to determine if the material burdened the religious rights of the parents.
Two judges in the majority were nominated by President George W. Bush and President Joe Biden. A third judge, appointed by President Donald Trump, dissented.
The parents rely heavily on a landmark 1972 Supreme Court precedent, Wisconsin v. Yoder, in which Amish parents challenged a state law requiring students to attend school until they were 16. The families asserted that requiring school attendance beyond the eighth grade violated their religious beliefs.
The Supreme Court ruled that the parents’ religious beliefs outweighed the state’s interest in enforcing the law.
But the district and its allies argue that simply exposing students to ideas can’t possibly be a burden on religion. That’s because, in order to establish such a burden, the parents must demonstrate that they or their children were coerced to act or believe in a way that’s contrary to their religion.
Reading about LGBTQ+ characters in a book, the school’s allies say, does neither.
“Schools are charged with educating the entire population and, to do that effectively, they can’t carve up the curriculum according to each parents’ religious beliefs,” said Jason Walta, deputy general counsel at the National Education Association, which filed a brief along with other groups in support of the school district. “That is at the very heart of having a pluralistic democracy.”
Some of the school’s allies are quoting heavily – and perhaps counterintuitively – from a high-profile decision from the Supreme Court three years ago that sided with a high school football coach who lost his job after offering prayers on the 50-yard line.
In that case, the court’s six conservatives lined up to reinstate Joe Kennedy, who became widely known as the “praying coach.” The 2022 opinion has a lot to say about what counts for religious coercion and what does not.
“Learning how to tolerate speech or prayer of all kinds is ‘part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society,’ a trait of character essential to ‘a tolerant citizenry,’” Justice Neil Gorsuch, a conservative, wrote for the majority in defending Kennedy’s right to pray.
“Of course, some will take offense to certain forms of speech or prayer they are sure to encounter,” Gorsuch continued, “but ‘offense…does not equate to coercion,’” he wrote, quoting from an earlier landmark opinion.
Those supporting the school district predict it would be hard for the Supreme Court to square that language with a decision for the parents.
Kennedy returned to his coaching job outside Seattle but then resigned after a single game.
