Are you very concerned with what’s happening in public schools? I didn’t think so.
But, easy as it is for us to be uninterested in schools to which we don’t send our young, there are times when disquiet, even alarm, may be warranted.
Like now. Because of a case before the US Supreme Court called Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which oral arguments were heard by the Justices last week.
Lead plaintiff Tamer Mahmoud is a Muslim parent in a Montgomery County, Maryland, school. He is part of a coalition of parents—including other Muslims, Roman Catholics and Ukrainian Orthodox Christians—who are suing for the right to have their children opt out of elementary school lessons based on story books that they see as celebrating immoral ideas.
Were there any Orthodox Jewish children in the county’s schools, their parents would likely have also joined the suit. In fact, Agudath Israel of America joined an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief in the case.
The defendant in the suit is Dr. Thomas Taylor, the Montgomery County school Superintendent.
The parents contend that requiring their children to participate in readings that include morally objectionable themes violates their religious beliefs and therefore their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion.
When the county school board initially announced its 20 “Pride Storybooks” to be read and incorporated in pre-K and elementary school classrooms, the board stated that parents could exempt their children from the readings.
But in March 2023, the board rescinded the opt-outs.
The parents sued in federal court for reinstatement of the option, but their request was rejected. Their subsequent request for a temporary restraining order was similarly nixed.
The parents appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to take up their case.
The parents cite the established law (in a 1972 case, Wisconsin v. Yoder) declaring Wisconsin’s compulsory high school attendance law unconstitutional, as it violated Amish parents’ First Amendment right to the free exercise of their religion. Here, the parents argue, they are merely seeking to be able to excuse their young children from one subset of the public schools’ curriculum that “deliberately seeks to confound their religious values.”
During last week’s oral arguments, the school board argued that children aren’t being forced to accept the curriculum’s ideas. Chief Justice John Roberts parried that point, saying, “Is that a realistic concept when you’re talking about a five-year-old?”
The parents also contend that, since the school board has long allowed opt-outs for other parts of the county schools’ curricula, disallowing them here did not satisfy the need for ordinances to be “neutral” in their application, a requirement established in a 1993 High Court decision.
Sound the alarm bells. “There is a lot riding on the outcome of this case,” noted the Agudah’s executive vice president Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, “in light of the ongoing efforts in certain jurisdictions to dictate what must be learned in yeshivos and other nonpublic schools, and by whom it must be taught.”
But there’s more. In support of their “neutrality” argument, the petitioners claim that school board members had displayed “explicit religious hostility” to parents who objected to the curriculum, suggesting that they were aligned with “white supremacists” and “xenophobes.” Ring them bells even louder.
“Progressive” sectors of American society have generally tolerated Americans with traditional views. When such views are based on religious beliefs, the Constitution demands no less.
But there can be end runs around even that foundational document.
Various studies have established that public opinion and the media can influence judges in their decision-making. The constitutionality of a law is, in the end, decided by judges, ultimately by those of the High Court. When sufficiently substantial parts of society come to embrace things that may have once been seen as objectionable, the new attitude can waft upward, as has happened, to influence how even Supreme Court Justices interpret the Constitution and its guarantees.
And so, should enough Americans decide that their religious fellow citizens, by virtue of their religious beliefs, are akin to racists, well, as per the cautionary legend on old maps put it, there be dragons.
The Court’s decision is expected this summer.
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