The Supreme Court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor on June 27 was cheered by conservatives and religious liberty advocates. The 6–3 ruling found that a Maryland public school district violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause by refusing to let parents opt their elementary school children out of lessons featuring LGBTQ-themed storybooks. The Court reaffirmed a bedrock principle going back a century to Pierce v. Society of Sisters: Parents cannot be forced to have their children exposed to material that conflicts with their religious beliefs, certainly not without notice and the opportunity to opt out.
But don’t be surprised if Mahmoud proves to be far from the final word. Not because SCOTUS’s legal reasoning is muddled—it’s not—but because of the way reading is taught in many elementary classrooms. The gap between how courts think “curriculum” works and how it’s actually implemented in elementary classrooms is vast. And that means schools will likely keep finding themselves on the receiving end of angry phone calls, and possibly lawsuits, from parents blindsided by what their children bring home in their backpacks.
In Mahmoud, the books in question weren’t part of the Montgomery County school district’s core curriculum. A few years ago, the MCPS school board “determined that the books used in its existing [English language arts] curriculum were not representative of many students and families in Montgomery County because they did not include LGBTQ characters,” according to the majority opinion written by Justice Alito. The board decided to introduce “LGBTQ+-inclusive texts.” Five books for younger students were at issue in Mahmoud: Intersection Allies, Prince & Knight, Love, Violet, Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, and Uncle Bobby’s Wedding.
As described in the majority decision, the school board suggested “that teachers incorporate the new texts into the curriculum in the same way that other books are used, namely, to put them on a shelf for students to find on their own; to recommend a book to a student who would enjoy it; to offer the books as an option for literature circles, book clubs, or paired reading groups; or to use them as a read aloud.” This is easily recognizable as the “reader’s workshop” model, which relies on students self-selecting books from a “classroom library” (not to be confused with a larger, stand-alone school library)—bins filled with dozens of books, even hundreds of them, on shelves in a child’s classroom, sorted by reading levels, genres, or themes, and providing time for both independent and guided practice. In the workshop model, teachers lead “mini-lessons” on a reading “skill” or “strategy” from a common text. But students typically practice on books they choose themselves—on the theory that this generates kids’ interest and engagement.
The workshop model also relies heavily on whole-class read-alouds, which is the principal source of the conflict in Mahmoud. The Court looked askance, for example, at a 2022 professional development session that advised teachers to correct students who make “hurtful comments” on transgender issues. “When we’re born, people make a guess about our gender and label us ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ based on our body parts,” they were advised by the district to explain. “Sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong.” A guidance document also encouraged teachers to “disrupt the either/or thinking” of their students about biological sex. Initially, MCPS allowed parents to opt out of read-alouds featuring the controversial books but later rescinded that option. It was this shift—the loss of notice and opt-out rights—that the Court found constitutionally unsupportable: Parents were denied the opportunity to withhold consent on religious grounds.
