Muslim, Christian and Jewish parents aren't the only groups concerned about Maryland's Montgomery County, a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C. that hosts the National Institutes of Health and is reportedly the most religiously diverse county in America, overruling them on the materials their children as young as 3 must learn in public schools.

Psychologists, doctors, radical feminists, religious broadcasters, sheikhs and imams, 66 members of Congress, 35 Maryland lawmakers, 26 states, parents denied opt-outs in the district, and scholars of religion, philosophy and law asked the Supreme Court to strike down Montgomery County's policy in a case that drew 40 friend-of-the-court briefs in just 11 days.

SCOTUS agreed to take the case, scheduled for oral argument next month, after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the religious parents, finding that no one was forced “to change their religious beliefs or conduct" when their children were exposed to "Pride storybooks" through English Language Arts lessons.

The books feature sex workers, kink, drag, gender transitions and elementary-age same-sex romance. Montgomery County Public Schools reversed itself a day after promising parents for the second time it would notify and let them opt out their kids, claiming that's only required under state law for sex education, not ELA lessons.

See the list of books

SCOTUS will consider whether public schools "burden parents’ religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents’ religious convictions and without notice or opportunity to opt out."

Only one brief does not support the parents against MCPS, by the School Superintendents Association, Consortium of State School Boards Associations, Council of the Great City Schools and the National School Attorneys Association.

"Mandating notice and opt out rights without demonstrating coercive effect risks drastically increasing burden on schools," says the officially neutral brief.

It could "change the substantive education that students receive, leaving significant gaps in students’ learning" on subjects such as "any part of world history or current events that includes negative or unflattering details about their religion," they said.

The 4th Circuit's ruling makes it "impossible" for Muslim parents and faith leaders specifically to "raise their children in accordance with divine commands," University of California Santa Barbara religious studies professor Ahmad Atif Ahmad and Texas imams said in a brief.

It will "banish families of certain faiths" and create "a forced homogeneity, where our [public] schools no longer reflect the religious pluralism of American society," they wrote. "Private Islamic schools experience lengthy waitlists that they attribute directly to moral standards in public schools" and well-off parents "may even send their children abroad."

Having failed to convince the 4th Circuit 17 months ago, prominent religious liberty legal scholars warned SCOTUS that the Richmond, Virginia-based court isn't alone in misreading the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause as tolerating "indirect coercion" of parents.

"The lower courts are confused – and mostly wrong – about whether religious burdens from mandatory school instruction implicate the First Amendment," the University of Virginia's Douglas Laycock, George Mason University's Helen Alvare, Stanford's Michael McConnell – a former 10th Circuit judge – and others wrote in their brief.

The 4th Circuit suggested parents must show "schoolteachers are forcing their children to affirm views contrary to their religion," but "the very act of instructing" such young children "on these highly personal topics … and telling them that their prior beliefs are 'hurtful' – necessarily pressures students and violates the parents’ religious rights," they said.

Gender identity is a homophobic religion?

The gender-critical Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) took a different route to support the plaintiff parents Tamer Mahmoud, Enas Barakat, Jeff and Svitlana Roman and Chris and Melissa Persak, describing "mandatory instruction in gender ideology" as an "unconstitutional establishment of religion" that disfavors "secular belief" in its brief.

Gender ideology harms boys, girls, women, lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, the group said, and specifically sexual minorities because "they are more likely to be given sex trait modifications as children." Its membership is nearly 40% lesbian and bisexual women.

WoLF said the "born in the wrong body” narrative is popular in Pakistan and Iran, which subsidize "sex change" procedures but kill homosexuals.

The storybooks present an "uneven and distorted view of sex and gender," ignoring the biologically "fundamental inherent differences between the sexes … reflected in accepted gender norms," licensed psychologists and the Manhattan Institute said in their brief.

The influence of gender theory has a plausible collection to increased anxiety and depression in America, especially among teenagers, they said, with mental illness especially common in "gender questioning" students.

Because young children "do not know to question what they are taught" and "will suppress their natural instincts to be repulsed by what is presented in books," teaching the storybooks puts them "in an untenable position" of being pressured to accept "novel" concepts that do "not fit reality as they experience it, creating confusion at best and distress for some," the brief says.

"Research confirms exposure of too-young children to sexualized materials … leads to irreparable psychological and even physical harms to minor children," and "may even lead to permanently mutilating surgeries" described as gender affirming care, America's Frontline Doctors, best known for challenging COVID-19 orthodoxy, said in its brief. 

Preventing parents from withholding their children from storybook lessons "can also fairly and arguably be characterized as criminal child sexual abuse," they said.

'A school’s duty is to not itself discriminate'

An attorney who has argued before SCOTUS 28 times and represented an Orthodox Jewish group in the 1972 precedent Yoder, which cemented religious parents' First Amendment right to reject secondary public education for their children, filed a brief without a client.

Nathan Lewin, who said he also drafted a successful 1972 amendment to the Civil Rights Act that required employers to grant religious accommodations that don't cause "undue hardship" to their business, said SCOTUS can overturn MCPS without harming its 1990 precedent Smith, which limited religious exemptions under "neutral, generally applicable" laws.

The Free Exercise Clause "is directed to government officials of Maryland and orders them to refrain from imposing and enforcing regulations that fail to accommodate – and thereby prohibit – the free exercise of religion" by the plaintiffs, Lewin wrote.

"Congress has long recognized in crafting legislation" that "parental autonomy over the education of children – particularly on matters of obvious moral or religious significance – is essential to our Nation’s scheme of ordered liberty," the 18 senators and 48 representatives wrote in their brief.

They said the MCPS board "improperly hid behind" Title IX sex discrimination and the transgender employment discrimination precedent Bostock to justify withholding "much simpler accommodations" for religious parents than the "complex carve-outs" it grants to parents for "ordinary secular reasons (special educational needs)."

The board's argument is "so absurd" that it did not "quote or even cite a single provision of Title IX," whose "plain language makes clear that a school’s duty is to not itself discriminate," lawmakers said. Not only was Bostock limited to Title VII, but SCOTUS said the ruling "may not even control in cases involving other provisions of Title VII."

The Maryland lawmakers said "this case largely begins, and should come to a quick end" with Yoder, but even without that precedent, MCPS "got creative" by rebranding sex ed as ELA to avoid statutory opt-out and went even further afield by rejecting notification altogether.

State law explicitly requires opt-out for "instruction related to family life and human sexuality objectives" without mention of a specific curriculum, they said. It applies "no matter if it arises in an English, math, social studies, or science module."

Ruling for the plaintiffs "does not open the floodgates to allow parents a veto power over any part of public school curriculums" but just reaffirms the existing "opt-out for sexual material of this type," other MCPS parents denied exemptions for their children said in a brief.

Wisconsin parent Tammy Fournier, whose lawsuit overturned Kettle Moraine School District's secret gender transition policy that worsened her daughter's gender confusion, filed a brief to protect parents' rights in secret-transition districts.

"In many ways, Tammy was fortunate" by discovering her "daughter’s struggles about her body before her school did," yet the district said it would ignore her objections to the girl's transition, says the brief, submitted by the Alliance Defending Freedom. Other parents have discovered districts treating their child, "often a preteen girl," as the opposite sex "after the fact."