Montgomery County parents have asked the Supreme Court to secure their right to protect their children from radical curricula. The Court should agree.
Montgomery County parents have asked the Supreme Court to secure their right to protect their children from radical curricula. The Court should agree.
G race Morrison was not looking for a fight, but when her local school board tried to force transgender ideology on her youngest daughter, this Maryland mother of seven wasn’t going to back down — even at steep financial cost. Grace, along with 300 other concerned parents in Montgomery County, is asking the Supreme Court to vindicate her right to opt her young child out of exposure to instruction on human sexuality and gender identity that conflicts with her religious beliefs.
Grace and her husband, Eric, adopted their youngest daughter from Ukraine in 2013. They homeschooled their older children, but decided to enroll their youngest daughter, a girl with special learning needs (including Down’s syndrome, ADHD, and behavioral issues), in the county’s pre-K program when she was three years old. In May 2023, a neighbor asked Grace: “What are you going to do about the books?”
The “books” the neighbor was referring to turned out to be a collection of “Pride” storybooks woven into the language-arts curriculum for young learners in Montgomery County public schools. Grace sent an email to her daughter’s teacher. The response was immediate: Yes, very sensitive materials were going to be presented in the classroom. Grace thought, “Well, then I just won’t send her in on those days.” She was then told by school officials that she wouldn’t be informed when the books would be read — nor could she opt her daughter out of attending class when they were read. “I still remember: That felt like a kick in the gut,” recounts Grace. “How could this happen in the United States? What happened to our Constitution?”
Grace approached the principal at her daughter’s new school to ask about opting her daughter out of the “Pride” readings. She was told that “this is the policy of Montgomery County and that maybe the public school system isn’t for me.” Grace was dumbfounded. Just a year earlier, the county had repeatedly promised parents they would be notified when the contentious books were read so they could opt their children out of the lesson — a promise mandated by state law any time schools teach about family life and human sexuality.
As Catholics, Grace said that she and her husband “understand our God-given role as the primary educators of our children, and we only delegate that — but not completely — to the teachers.” Concluding that the themes of the “Pride” storybooks were at odds with their Catholic faith, the Morrisons decided to pull their daughter from public school and homeschool her instead. “We couldn’t risk leaving our daughter in that situation because, for one, she has a lot of awareness and she will absorb a lot,” says Grace. She felt that it would be very confusing if she told her daughter, as she was getting on the school bus in the morning, to listen to what her teacher was saying, only to tell her when she came home: “Oh, but don’t listen to that. That’s wrong.”
The Morrisons have now taken on many of their daughter’s needs previously met in school, such as speech therapy and physical fitness, in addition to her academic classes. “We cannot realistically replace these services,” said Grace, but her family’s faith compels them to attempt it anyway. Grace and her husband anticipate it costing at least $15,000 a year to replace their daughter’s therapy and $10,000 a year for the academic services and supplies that their daughter receives in public school.
Grace has joined other parents from a variety of faiths who object to mandatory instruction using the “Pride” storybooks. They believe that the topics and perspectives in the books are at odds with their religious obligations. When protests and pleas to opt out went unheeded by the school board, some of these parents filed a lawsuit. The lawsuit does not seek to remove the books from the schools, but seeks only to restore the right of parents to opt their children out of the controversial curriculum.
Last year, a district court ruled that the parents couldn’t show that the school board’s “no-opt-out policy” burdens their religious exercise. A divided Fourth Circuit panel agreed this past May, ruling that, in the absence of any “coercive effect,” there is no burden on religious exercise. Grace and the other parents involved filed with the Supreme Court a petition for review, which was granted last Friday.
What will Grace do if her right to opt out is vindicated? She said she is still “very open to trying to restore a good relationship with the school system.” Like countless other parents of faith, Grace is disappointed that her good relationship with the public school system was fractured over conflict she sees as unnecessary. But under no circumstances will she allow her daughter with special needs to be exposed to unsuitable material. In its review of this case, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to restore Graces’ rights, the rights of all parents, and general trust in the public school system.