Supreme Court let parents opt kids out of learning about LGBTQ+ people. Almost no one is doing it.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that a Maryland school district must allow parents to opt their children out of instruction relating to LGBTQ+ identities, but only a minuscule number of families have actually done so.

Data from the Montgomery County School District, the largest in the state, shows that only 58 opt-out requests from 43 families have been submitted on religious grounds. With 160,000 students in the district, that means a measly 0.03% will be removed from the classroom when certain topics are discussed.

The report shows that oftentimes, the anti-LGBTQ+ forces fighting to ban books and anti-discrimination policies from schools across the country are a loud but very small minority.

Much of the discourse surrounding these results also centers on the massive burden the SCOTUS decision has placed on teachers, who are required to create alternative assignments for the small number of students who must be removed from the classroom when certain topics are discussed.

In fact, the district originally had an opt-out policy but then removed it because it had become “unworkable.”

As of September 18, most of the opt-outs (46) were for elementary school students. There were 10 requests for middle school students and two for high school students.

The school reported that the most common themes/books of which families opted out were “LGBTQ+ inclusion “LGBTQ+, Culture/Diversity, and Inclusion” for elementary schoolers; “LGBTQ+ and Social Justice” for middle schoolers; and the book All American Boys for high schoolers, which is not LGBTQ+-focused and tells the story of racism and police violence through the eyes of one Black teen and one white teen.

The relevant Supreme Court case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, was brought by Maryland parents against the district over the ability to opt their children out of lessons that featured books containing LGBTQ+ characters or any discussion of LGBTQ+ identities.

The district didn’t budge, so several parents sued. Two lower courts denied them a preliminary injunction, but the Supreme Court granted them one. Public education advocates warn that the ruling could lead to even more requests for opt-outs of public education on wide-ranging topics, including Earth Day, critical thinking, and anti-drug programs.

The decision was 6-3 along ideological lines, with the Republican-appointed justices siding with the religious parents who wanted to opt their children out of reading books like Prince & Knight and Uncle Bobby’s Wedding in the Montgomery County school system.

“The Court does not accept the Board’s characterizations of the LGBTQ+-inclusive instruction as mere ‘exposure to objectionable ideas’ or as lessons in ‘mutual respect,’” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. “The storybooks unmistakably convey a particular viewpoint about same-sex marriage and gender.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissenting opinion that the Court ignored “longstanding precedent” and “invents a constitutional right to avoid exposure to ‘subtle’ themes ‘contrary to the religious principles’ that parents wish to instill in their children.”

“Exposing students to the ‘message’ that LGBTQ people exist, and that their loved ones may celebrate their marriages and life events, the majority says, is enough to trigger the most demanding form of judicial scrutiny,” Sotomayor added.

Trans journalist and activist Erin Reed wrote that the decision is “just the latest example of how religious exemptions are being weaponized to roll back civil rights under the guise of ‘freedom.’”

“Each new ruling gives a single person the power to disrupt an entire classroom… But the data out of Montgomery County, Maryland, makes one thing unmistakably clear: this crusade is not a mass movement. It’s the obsession of a vanishingly small minority, inflated by a Republican Party that has turned resentment of diversity—and especially of LGBTQ+ people—into the centerpiece of its politics.”

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Originally Posted Here