How broad is the SCOTUS ruling on parents opting children out of classroom instruction that conflicts with their religious beliefs?

Question

Today the US Supreme Court handed down their decision in Mahmoud vs Taylor.

At issue was a school board's policy that:

it will not give [parents] notice when ["LGBTQ+-inclusive" texts] are going to be used and that their children’s attendance during those periods is mandatory.

The Supreme Court ruled that parents are entitled to a preliminary injunction against that policy while the lawsuit continues. That is:

the Board should be ordered to notify [parents] in advance whenever one of the books in question or any other similar book is to be used in any way and to allow them to have their children excused from that instruction.

Exercising this right obviously requires that parents be notified when classroom instruction includes such material, so that they can take their children out of that class. But I wonder how broad this is. Is it specific to LBGTQ+ material, or does it apply to anything the parents might object to on religious grounds? Since teachers may not be able to predict what some parents would object to, does this essentially require them to distribute their entire lesson plan to parents?

Answer 1

At this point, it's unclear. The progress of the case at this point was still in its preliminary stages; at this stage, the parent-parties were seeking a preliminary injunction, which is what the Supreme Court today granted to the parents. Therefore, the case will now go back to the federal district court for farther proceedings.

And even if the case were farther along, it would be difficult to categorically or uniformly assess how a Supreme Court ruling applies to each of the various policies across the numerous school districts among the 51 state/state-equivalent and 3100+ county/county-equivalent jurisdictions.

At the state level, it's going to depend on whether a state has its own version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and how expansive the protections of such an act are in those states having one. Where a state lacks such a state-law legislative or constitutional protective regime, then it's going to turn on the specifics of the local school district's policy, and how similar that local policy is to the facts of the case in Mahmoud.

The most likely course of action for most school districts is likely going to reflect an increased effort to attentively survey the lesson plans of their teachers, and for those districts to make efforts to keep parents informed of what is being taught so that parents may perform their own evaluation and seek accommodation where they feel it necessary to stop what they perceive to be an infringement to their (and their child's) sincerely held religious beliefs (which is and has been the main thrust of the substance of the law for roughly the past 80 years).

Answer 2

The Supreme Court ruled that parents are entitled to a preliminary injunction against that policy while the lawsuit continues. That is:

the Board should be ordered to notify [parents] in advance whenever one of the books in question or any other similar book is to be used in any way and to allow them to have their children excused from that instruction.

Exercising this right obviously requires that parents be notified when classroom instruction includes such material, so that they can take their children out of that class.

No right is established by the present ruling other than the plaintiffs' right to the preliminary injunction they requested. However, in coming to that decision, the SC did conclude that the plaintiffs are likely to ultimately prevail on the merits of their case, and in doing so it rejected some lower-court analyses that would have made that outcome less likely.

Supposing that the plaintiffs do prevail, that will establish that their existing first amendment right to freedom of religion precludes their school district from using the materials in question in their curriculum without affording the plaintiffs and similarly-believing parents an opportunity to opt their children out, or providing some other suitable accommodation.

But I wonder how broad this is. Is it specific to LBGTQ+ material, or does it apply to anything the parents might object to on religious grounds?

This is answered for the current decision at the end of its syllabus:

Thus, the petitioners have shown that they are entitled to a preliminary injunction. Specifically, until all appellate review in this case is completed, the Board should be ordered to notify the petitioners in advance whenever one of the books in question or any other similar book is to be used in any way and to allow them to have their children excused from that instruction.

That is, the injunction is specific to circumstances involving the particular books and similar ones, where it appears "similar" should be taken to mean promoting the same or similar opinions and moral judgements about gender identity, same-sex marriage, and associated issues. The injunction granted does not extend to instruction involving other kinds of materials, even if the paintiffs have similar religious objections about them.

Moreover, the court considered the particular nature of the materials in question, among other details of the case, in determining that a preliminary injunction was warranted. It did not explicitly rule out other religious objections to instructional materials being sufficient grounds to support a claim for infringement of religious freedom, but it did not leave the impression that it would have considered arbitrary other religious objections to be sufficient.

I suppose you're interested in what the larger implications would be of the plaintiffs prevailing in the underlying case, but even if we suppose that they do ultimately prevail, there's no way to predict that before the decision is published.

Since teachers may not be able to predict what some parents would object to, does this essentially require them to distribute their entire lesson plan to parents?

No.

1. The injunction is limited to the particular books at issue and similar ones. There is no reason to think that it would leave teachers uncertain about which lessons require parent notification and provision for opt out. There may well be other lessons and classroom materials that elicit objections on religious grounds, but they are not covered by the injunction.

2. The district originally did provide an opt-out arrangement with respect to the materials in question, pursuant, apparently, to established district guidelines for respecting religious diversity. It was discontinuation of that arrangement that occasioned the lawsuit. The injunction seems to require the district to restore the particular opt-out program they previously provided, which, as far as I can tell, did not involve teachers distributing their entire lesson plans, nor anything substantially equivalent.

3. Although I don't expect it is within individual teachers' discretion, the district likely has the alternative of settling the entire lawsuit by agreeing to permanently remove the materials in question from their curriculum. That would relieve teachers from any kind of notification requirements related to the suit. Inasmuch as the district claims that among their reasons for discontinuing their opt-out program in the first place was a large and increasing number opt outs, it seems like that might have been overall well received by their community if they had handled it that way in the first place. That equation is different now that the issue has been so politicized.

Answer 3

There is actually an indication in the SCOTUS case that this can go much, much broader than just LGBT books.

Below is an excerpt from the ruling.

[Today, we hold that the parents have shown that they are] entitled to a preliminary injunction. A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses "a very real threat of undermining" the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill. Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 218 (1972). And a government cannot condition

This is a VERY broad statement that does not talk about merely LGBTQIA+ books. A parent could look at this ruling and claim that their child should be excluded from lessons about other topics that their parents have very strong religious beliefs against. If a parent is a creationist, they could claim that their religious beliefs are undermined by teaching their child about evolution. Parents could use this to stop their children from being taught about human caused for climate change, because their religion tells them God controls Earth's climate.

This is just a small selection. There are hundreds of not thousands of topics that a religious parent may take offense with if their child is taught "the wrong way".

In addition, there are indications that for many schools, having to maintain an index of topics that some of their students have an exclusion for may cause such a large administrative burden that they may end up not including any of those topics to begin with, not even for children that do not have a parental exclusion.