School Choice Could Fix the Conflicts That Led to the Supreme Court's Mahmoud Decision

There’s no need to fight over lessons if you’re not forced to learn in government-run battlegrounds.

One of the final cases the U.S. Supreme Court decided at the end of its term last week was Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which a majority recognized the right of parents to opt out of lessons contrary to families' religious beliefs. In some circles, the decision is being portrayed as a setback for the treatment of gays, lesbians, and the differently gendered, since they were the focus of the books that the victorious plaintiffs objected to. That gets it all wrong. This case is really about the right of families to guide their children's education and the difficulty of doing that in the rigid confines of one-size-fits-some government schools.

When Lessons Clash With Religious Beliefs

Mahmoud v. Taylor revolves around the inclusion by Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools of books in which LGBTQ+ characters are the focus and their sexuality and conduct of their lives are presented in a positive manner. Initially, families with religious objections to the material were allowed to opt their children out of reading and discussing the books. Within a year, the schools rescinded the policy, arguing that too many families were opting out, imposing a burden on the system. Even so, the school continued to allow other opt-outs—including from sex education—that involved noncurricular activities or were mandated by state law.

A group of parents of several faiths, backed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, filed suit.

Writing for the Supreme Court's majority, Justice Samuel Alito summarized the long list of Supreme Court cases that recognize parents' right to guide their children's education in matters of conscience and religion. That includes the right to reject public schooling recognized in Pierce v. Society of Sisters; the right to refuse to salute the flag, acknowledged in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette; and Wisconsin v. Yoder, which recognized the right of Amish families to discontinue their children's education after eighth grade because "the values and programs of the modern secondary school are in sharp conflict with the fundamental mode of life mandated by the Amish religion."

In the case before the court this year, "these books impose upon children a set of values and beliefs that are 'hostile' to their parents' religious beliefs," Alito wrote in the majority opinion deciding Mahmoud v. Taylor. "And the books exert upon children a psychological 'pressure to conform' to their specific viewpoints. The books therefore present the same kind of 'objective danger to the free exercise of religion' that the Court identified in Yoder."

The majority found that the plaintiffs "are likely to succeed in their free exercise claims" and imposed a preliminary injunction on the school district preventing it from forcing children to participate in sessions based on the books in question.

The reaction was fast and furious.

"This ruling opens the door for school systems across the country to silence students, erase identities, and strip away the very protections that inclusive education was built to provide," objected the Montgomery County-based MoCo Pride Center.

"The decision has the power to disrupt our classrooms and our school communities by assaulting a bedrock principle of public education: that the diversity of our students and their families should be valued and celebrated," agreed the Montgomery County Education Association.

It's About Conflicting Values, Not Erasure

The complaints all place the decision in the context of the specific groups and ideology represented by the textbooks rather than acknowledging any tension between public institutions that want to teach favored ideas to kids and parents who resist because they hold different values.

Perhaps Rep. Jamie Raskin (D–Md.), who represents Montgomery County, came closest among the naysayers to the truth in his objections:

"Can students opt out of science classes where the theory of evolution is taught if it conflicts with their family religious beliefs in creation-science? Can students opt out of history classes where wars are taught if it conflicts with their family religious beliefs about nonviolence?" Raskin wrote in a statement. "All of them will now be able to flood the courts with claims that particular curricular teachings and books offend their sincere values and their children should not be exposed to the offensive doctrines."

Well, yes. As Alito pointed out, Mahmoud didn't come out of the blue; it's the latest of many cases recognizing that when ideas favored by teachers and administrators in public schools conflict with families' sincerely held beliefs, parents and children have a right to exempt themselves, leave public schooling, or even terminate formal education. The parents' request in Mahmoud to allow their kids to excuse themselves from reading some books is rather modest.

But parents' requested remedies could be wider-ranging. We live in a fractured society in which parents, educators, and school board members increasingly disagree over interpretations of history, whether children should be treated as individuals or as members of ethnic/linguistic/racial/sexual groups, public health policy, discipline, and so much more. The conflicts are heated.

"Reports of unruly school board meetings, protests over curricula, and lawsuits against district policies have been making regular appearances in the media," Lauraine Langreo commented last August for Education Week. "It feels as if every stakeholder—from school leaders to teachers, to parents, to students, to policymakers—is at odds."

Public Schools Turn Learning Into 'a Mere Battlefield for Sects and Parties'

Importantly, the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who believed parents should be required to educate their children, nevertheless rejected government-run schools because they create such conflicts. "That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecating," he objected in On Liberty. That's because arguments "about what the State should teach, and how it should teach…convert the subject into a mere battle-field for sects and parties."

And that's what we see in endless arguments and court cases over school officials trying to inculcate students with ideas that are offensive to those students and their parents.

Mahmoud was a win for parents' right to guide their kids' education. But the best outcome is to get government out of the business of running schools. Then families can choose learning environments that suit them without fighting others over what and how the state should teach.