#opt outs

Alex Bollinger at LGBTQ Nation:

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) has vetoed several anti-diversity bills, including one that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender inmates in the state prison system. The bill is H.B. 805, which bans the state from paying for gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy and surgeries for transgender inmates. It would have also required the state to keep a copy of a transgender person’s original birth certificate if they have the gender marker on it updated, and it included language saying that there are only two genders, male and female. According to WPDE, the bill started as a bipartisan measure requiring age verification for adult websites, but the final version of the bill contained a list of far-right initiatives, including the ones listed above related to transgender people’s rights and another measure that would require school districts to create a policy to allow parents to opt their kids out of activities that “impose a substantial burden on the student’s religious beliefs.” “My faith teaches me that we are all children of God, no matter our differences, and that it is wrong to target vulnerable people, as this bill does,” Stein said in vetoing the bill.

The other three bills that Stein vetoed on Thursday were related to diversity measures. One of the bills would have cut funding to schools that engage in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Another bill would have banned diversity training and staff positions at state agencies, and it also would have banned state funds from being used for diversity initiatives at those agencies.

“We should not whitewash history,” Stein wrote about the education bill, adding that the state “should ensure our students learn from diverse perspectives and form their own opinions.” He said the bill about state diversity measures is “riddled with vague definitions” and “imposes extreme penalties for unknowable violations.” The bills passed along party lines, with all state Democrats opposing the diversity bills and only one Democrat voting in favor of the anti-trans bill. Republicans have a nearly veto-proof majority, but they need at least one Democrat to cross party lines in the North Carolina House of Representatives to overturn Stein’s veto.

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) vetoes an anti-trans bill and also three other anti-diversity measures.

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Greg Owen at LGBTQ Nation:

An elementary school teacher in Nashville, Tennessee is claiming victory after his school agreed he doesn’t have to read a book about two gay dads to his students. The teacher enlisted a Christian nationalist legal group to threaten the school if his demands weren’t met. Eric Rivera, a teacher at KIPP Antioch College Prep Elementary (a public charter school in South Nashville), said he was ordered in January to read the book, Stella Brings the Family, to his first-grade class. The book, written by Miriam B. Schiffer, is a children’s picture book about a girl with two dads who worries about the upcoming Mother’s Day party at school because she doesn’t have a mom to invite. Rivera said he asked school administrators for a religious accommodation because the book conflicted with his Christian beliefs.

“I refused to read a book that had two fathers on the cover and one daughter,” Rivera told WZTV News in Nashville. “I believe that that is not what God designed a marriage to be, and a family to be.” Rivera said administrators approved his request to have a teacher assistant read the book instead, but the next day, he was called into the principal’s office with a warning: Follow the class lesson plan “with fidelity” or risk being terminated.   Rivera said he was reassigned to a technology teaching post and later moved to a kindergarten class.

Fearing he could lose his job “for anything that I do based on my religious beliefs,” Rivera enlisted the far-right religious group First Liberty Institute to force the school’s hand, and acknowledge his “religious right” to refuse to read the book. “We’ve submitted a demand letter demanding that they accommodate Mr. Rivera’s religious practices and that they not discriminate,” said Cliff Martin, Senior Counsel for First Liberty. Along with Alliance Defending Freedom and other Christian advocacy legal groups, First Liberty is a member of the advisory board of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for Donald Trump’s second term.

Martin said Rivera’s religious liberty claim centers on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which requires employers to reasonably accommodate religious beliefs. The school was given 10 days to respond under threat of litigation. The strong-arm tactic worked. The school agreed to clear Rivera’s record and accommodate his demand that he won’t read the two gay dads children’s book as part of the school’s first-grade lesson plan. The bigger win for Rivera and the far-right, however, may be the discord they stirred up around LGBTQ+ content in Tennessee schools.

Daniel Villarreal at LGBTQ Nation:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday its investigation into three Michigan school districts — Lansing, Detroit Public, and Godfrey-Lee Public — to see whether parents were given their right to opt their students out of learning so-called “sexual orientation and gender ideology (SOGI) content” in pre-K-12 classes. The DOJ is “fiercely committed to ending the growing trend of local school authorities embedding sexuality and gender ideology in every aspect of public education,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon wrote in a statement about the DOJ’s investigation. Dhillon’s statement specifically referenced Mahmoud v. Taylor, the 2025 Supreme Court decision, which said that schools must allow religious parents to opt their children out of any lessons acknowledging that LGBTQ+ people exist. The court agreed with the parents’ claim that their First Amendment rights were violated when schools used books that included LGBTQ+ characters. The existence of queer people contradicts some parents’ religious beliefs and, thus, violates their First Amendment right to direct their children’s religious upbringing, the court said.

[...] Dhillon’s statement suggested that the Trump administration may deny federal education funding to the state if districts are found to have violated Title IX or Mahmoud v. Taylor. The administration has already investigated numerous states’ trans-inclusive school policies for allegedly violating Title IX.

Molly Wadzeck at HuffPost:

Across the United States, more parents are growing concerned as they witness a narrow religious ideology gaining influence over their children’s public schools. While some argue that inclusive school curricula are threatening their religious freedom, many others are worried that one belief system is being imposed — dictating not only which books are available in classrooms but who gets to be represented in the school experience. The battle over books, especially those centering LGBTQ+ lives and diverse identities, has become a larger conflict about who controls the definition of American childhood and which values shape that narrative.

“The question emerging in the law right now is: Which parents have rights?” Jessica Mason Pieklo, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor of Rewire News Group, told HuffPost. “We’re seeing the conservative legal movement rally around a narrow vision of parental identity, control, and rights, one that doesn’t reflect or include all families.” Education, once a shared public good, is increasingly becoming a battleground. And at the center of it is a Supreme Court case that could have far-reaching consequences: Mahmoud v. Taylor, which challenged the inclusion of LGBTQ+ books in a Maryland school district. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court blocked a Maryland school district’s LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum, ruling it posed a “very real threat” to the religious beliefs of some parents and supporting their right to opt their children out of such instruction. While the ruling doesn’t impose a nationwide ban, it opens the door for local challenges that can limit educators’ ability to provide diverse and inclusive education. For parents, this means the fight is about whose voices are heard in their communities.

Beyond Book Bans, A ‘Silent Erasure’ Is Occurring

“This isn’t a book ban case,” explains Kelly Jensen, award-winning author and editor at Book Riot. “It’s a case about education and religious rights. None of the books are being banned or pulled from curricula. The real issue is the chilling effect.” Teachers, already working under immense pressure, may now think twice before including LGBTQ+ books in classrooms, even if those books are age-appropriate and affirming. “The silent erasure of books, disappearing from shelves without formal challenges, is as insidious as outright bans,” Jensen warns. The ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor didn’t change the law outright, but it signaled a cultural shift. One where certain religious beliefs are being elevated above others. The uproar over inclusive books in schools isn’t a spontaneous, grassroots movement; it’s a carefully coordinated effort. “These book bans are astroturfed,” Pieklo said. “They don’t bubble up organically in a community because there’s overwhelming concern that some inappropriate material has been placed there. These are part of a larger advocacy campaign.” Despite the noise, most families support inclusive curricula and occupy a middle ground, favoring opt-out options for personal or religious objections without imposing blanket bans that restrict access for everyone else.

[...] As public schools face funding cuts and increasing pressure, decisions like Mahmoud v. Taylor hand a louder platform to a narrow, often extreme religious agenda that can then shape what every child is allowed to learn, regardless of their own parents wishes. Though these rulings claim to protect parental rights, some parents feel they frequently silence and disenfranchise those who want their children to see themselves reflected in their education and to understand the rich diversity of the world around them.

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

In June 2025, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling allowing parents to opt out of classes that teach material conflicting with their religious beliefs. The decision, which could affect lessons on everything from evolution to cultural diversity, was driven primarily by challenges to classroom instruction about LGBTQ+ people. The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, originated in Maryland’s Montgomery County School District—the state’s largest—which had previously required lessons on LGBTQ+ inclusion without permitting opt-outs. The ruling was celebrated by far-right activists as a major victory in a deep-blue state. But months later, the results are in: of more than 160,000 students enrolled, only 43 families chose to opt out of LGBTQ+ education districtwide.

In a report released on October 2, the Montgomery County School District approved just 58 opt-out requests from 43 families—under 0.03 percent of the district’s 160,000 students. In other words, 99.97 percent of families, even when given the option, chose to let their children learn about LGBTQ+ people. The books targeted by the handful of families include Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, about the marriage of two gay men; Intersectional Allies: We Make Room for All, which features a genderfluid character; and Planting the Rainbow: Places of LGBTQ+ History in Maryland, which teaches about key moments in the state’s queer history. For the families choosing to opt out, their children will be placed in separate classrooms or given alternate assignments when LGBTQ+ topics arise. The arrangement underscores a point the school district made during the court fight: creating entirely new materials for such a vanishingly small group is disruptive to classrooms and burdens teachers with unnecessary extra work—all to accommodate the religious beliefs of a tiny minority. Still, because of the Supreme Court’s ruling, those accommodations will now have to be made.

Meanwhile, in Republican-controlled states, officials have taken a far more oppressive approach to LGBTQ+ education. Rather than offering families the option to opt out, many states simply ban the material outright. Under “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” laws—first popularized in Florida and now enacted in 19 states—teachers are prohibited from acknowledging LGBTQ+ people in class instruction at various grade levels. In Texas, several colleges have gone even further, barring professors from recognizing that transgender people exist at all. When contrasted with the minuscule number of families opting out when given the choice, these policies look less like a reflection of public will and more like a top-down morality ban—one that would almost certainly be rejected if parents actually had the freedom to decide for themselves.

[...] The Supreme Court’s 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, claiming that their beliefs are incompatible with learning about LGBTQ+ people, racial diversity, or any worldview outside their own. 

Olivia Empson at The Guardian:

Kiernan, a 24-year-old transgender person from Colorado, feels drained from dealing with legislation that consistently limits the spaces and freedoms of people like him. Since he transitioned in 2016, it’s been the same – first bathroom bills, then censorship in the education system – routine attacks on LGBTQ+ rights that Kiernan feels have now just become part of living in the US. Now, in the wake of the Mahmoud v Taylor supreme court ruling, the stigmatization of these communities is likely to worsen. The highest court in the US ruled that parents in Maryland’s Montgomery county school district can opt their children out of lessons that include books with LGBTQ+ themes and characters if they feel that it violates their religious rights. The move angered LGBTQ+ groups and civil rights advocates who also say that the lengthy and judicial process of these opt-outs could have chaotic implications for the US education system nationwide. “LGBTQ-relevant books are just the beginning in accelerated censorship,” Sabrina Baêta, a senior member of PEN America, told the Guardian. “What’s to stop schools from backing away from any books that may be offensive? We have already seen other topics like Black history disappear as districts try to avoid anything potentially controversial.”

PEN America highlighted in a recent report that teachers may be more likely to overlook topics that require parental consent, thereby brushing over crucial books and subjects in classrooms that promote diverse identities and learning. In administrative terms, the court’s ruling also poses problems for teachers and educators. Rather than focusing on lessons at hand, they will have to grapple with what is or isn’t appropriate on religious grounds. And while anything with LGBTQ+ themes will constitute a student being able to leave the classroom, it creates a grey zone for topics like science and history, where certain lessons – such as about reproduction – could be seen as now potentially inappropriate. Opt-outs are believed by experts to have a pernicious effect on educational environments, but their implementation is not a new phenomenon. For a short period between the 2022-2023 school year, the Montgomery county board of education allowed them after introducing several “LGBTQ+ inclusive” texts into the curriculum. Less than a year after the books were introduced, however, the board rescinded this option, saying it “could not accommodate the growing number of opt-out requests without causing significant disruptions to the classroom environment”. Moreover, a school board official stated that permitting some students to opt out while stories were being told would expose others to “social stigma and isolation”.

“It’s really frustrating and a burden on my psyche,” Kiernan said, speaking on the mounting number of bills and legislation that have recently targeted LGBTQ+ youth. “These bills aren’t doing anything positive for children; it’s a political agenda that’s trying to veil itself in support for religious people,” he said. “I wish it would go away. Let people be people and stop using us as a political scapegoat.”

Alex Bollinger at LGBTQ Nation:

The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the case brought by parents who said that their First Amendment rights were violated when schools used books that included LGBTQ+ characters. 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, Maryland, 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.”

“Regardless, the question in cases of this kind is whether the educational requirement or curriculum at issue would ‘substantially interfere with the religious development’ of the child or pose ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices the parent wishes to instill in the child.” “Casting aside longstanding precedent, the Court invents a constitutional right to avoid exposure to ‘subtle’ themes ‘contrary to the religious principles’ that parents wish to instill in their children,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissenting opinion. “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.”

The case involved several sets of Christian and Muslim parents who objected to their kids reading books that mentioned LGBTQ+ people. The district had an opt-out policy that they later rescinded because, the district claimed, the opt-outs were becoming “unworkable.” [...] The parents want the courts to ultimately order teachers to notify them of every possible discussion where LGBTQ+ people may come up so that they could opt their children out, lest their kids learn that LGBTQ+ people exist. They claimed that knowing that LGBTQ+ people exist is contrary to their religious beliefs and violates their right to direct their children’s religious upbringing. 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.

Today, The MAGA 6 black robed tyrants on SCOTUS ruled in favor of right-wing extremist “parental rights” zealots in Mahmoud v. Taylor. The Mahmoud case, authored by SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito, dealt with opt-outs of LGBTQ+-related material in Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland.

See Also:

The Advocate: BREAKING: Supreme Court allows Maryland parents to opt their kids out of LGBTQ+ lessons in schools

HuffPost: Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Religious Parents Against LGBTQ+ Books

Trudy Ring at The Advocate:

The U.S Supreme Court’s six conservative justices, during oral arguments Tuesday, appeared sympathetic to parents who want to opt their children out of lessons that feature LGBTQ+ books. The arguments came in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor,in which some religious parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, seek a ruling that will force the Montgomery County Public Schools to offer the opt-outs and perhaps set a precedent for public schools around the nation. Parents were offered an opt-out when several LGBTQ-themed books were adopted for the language arts curriculum in October 2022. However, it became difficult to accommodate the number of opt-outs, according to the school district, and school officials worried that students who are part of the LGBTQ+ community or have family members who are would be subjected to social stigma and isolation. The opt-out policy also put the district at risk of noncompliance with antidiscrimination laws. So the district ended the policy in 2023. Parents from several religious faiths, including Islam, Roman Catholicism, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, sued to get the policy reinstated. Both a U.S. district court and an appeals court denied their request, so they appealed to the Supreme Court. “During more than two and a half hours of argument on Tuesday, several justices read aloud from the text of the disputed storybooks, some of which referred to drag queens and same-sex marriage,” The Washington Post reports. “Conservative justices repeatedly pressed the lawyer for the Maryland school system on why it could not easily accommodate the religious parents and allow their children to opt out of objectionable curriculum.”

[...] For the three liberal justices, it appeared to be a question of where the line is drawn. Sotomayor mentioned that parents could object to a variety of other content on religious grounds. These could include divorce, magic, evolution, interfaith marriage, and women’s achievements outside of traditional roles, she said. Justice Elena Kagan said she understood parents’ concerns, pointing out “that even some nonreligious parents might not be ‘thrilled’ with the content of some of the storybooks Montgomery County selected for young readers,” according to the Post. “Still, she worried about the sweeping implications of a Supreme Court ruling that gives parents a broad right to pick and choose to opt-out of any aspect of the school curriculum.” Although the conservatives sympathized with the parents, they may be inclined to rule narrowly in the case. Alito wondered if the opt-opt policy could be applied only in the early grades, while Justice Neil Gorsuch “latched onto several lines in Baxter’s brief, which claim that a school board member compared parents who object to LGBTQ-inclusive literature to ‘white supremacists’ and ‘xenophobes,’” Vox notes.

So the court could rule narrowly for the parents based on the board member’s alleged disrespect for religion “without handing down a broader rule that would impose unworkable disclosure rules on every public school in the country,” according to Vox. This is the same approach the court took in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, ruling in favor of baker Jack Phillips because the Colorado Civil Rights Commission disrespected his religious objections to making a wedding cake for a gay couple, without finding a broad right to discriminate. Therefore, the high court could hand down “a good-for-this-ride-only decision” for the Montgomery County parents or impose a “don’t say gay” policy on all public elementary schools, Vox concludes. The ruling will likely come down in late June or early July.

See Also:

LGBTQ Nation: Conservative justices side with religious parents in Supreme Court “Don’t Say Gay” case