FFRF law student essay contest 2026 — 3rd place: Ashni Verma
By Ashni Verma
Introduction
On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court decided Mahmoud v. Taylor, granting parents in a Maryland school district the right to excuse their children from lessons that engage with storybooks about the LGBTQ+ community. This essay explores the development of hybrid parental rights claims and identifies strategies for schools to maintain their commitment to multicultural, inclusive curricula in the wake of Mahmoud.
I. Development of hybrid parental rights claims
Before Mahmoud, the principal Supreme Court case addressing the conflict between parents’ due process and religious freedom rights and the state’s interest in education was Wisconsin v. Yoder. There, a group of Amish parents challenged the state of Wisconsin’s mandatory school attendance rule, which required that children attend school until they turned 16 and threatened civil fines and criminal penalties for parents who refused to comply with the law. The parent-plaintiffs declined to send their children to school after the eighth grade because they believed that high school education would detract from their faith and way of life. For the highly secluded community, for which “salvation require[d] life in a church community separate and apart from the world and worldly influence,” any higher schooling would be inimical to their way of life. Not only would the Amish children experience psychological harm from compulsory high school attendance, but the Amish community as a whole would suffer as children became disillusioned with their religious teachings. In light of the unique harm that compulsory schooling would impose upon the Amish parents’ exercise of their faith, the court found that Wisconsin’s interest in imposing universal education, while admittedly high, was not compelling enough to fully upset the Amish faith and mode of life. Thus, the parents were allowed to exempt their children from school based on their religious beliefs.
Yoder created an uneasy precedent for lower courts to interpret and apply. The decision is narrow, but not so narrow as to be inapplicable. In certain circumstances, parents were successful in using hybrid parental rights and Free Exercise claims to exempt their children from objectionable school requirements. Key to these successes was the element of compulsion to engage in overt actions inimical to one’s faith, with the threat of punitive action for failure to comply. However, circuit courts declined to apply this standard in several other cases related to religious apparel in sports, sex education, vaccination requirements, transgender students’ access to bathrooms, and reading materials. These cases underscored the difference between compulsion and “mere exposure.” While a case like Yoder required students to regularly participate in actions that conflicted with their religious beliefs, merely reading about topics that run contrary to one’s beliefs did not rise to this level.
II. Upsetting the status quo
In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the school board of Montgomery County, Md., approved a language arts curriculum that included, among other diverse perspectives, several elementary-age storybooks featuring LGBTQ+ characters. The school board directed teachers to incorporate these stories into their curricula as they would any other books and released guidance materials that directed teachers to “‘disrupt’” the thinking of students when they expressed hurtful or negative comments about the LGBTQ+ community stories. While the school originally allowed parents to opt their children out of lessons that included these stories, they quickly disposed of that policy because accommodating the growing number of opt-outs created significant administrative burdens for teachers, while also undermining the purported goals of the school board to foster an environment of inclusion and acceptance.
In directing Montgomery County to honor parents’ religious opt-outs from LGBTQ+ storybooks, the Supreme Court adopted a very different view of Yoder than that of lower court precedents by crediting the threat of exposure to other beliefs as a sufficient justification for the opt-out. Because the board specified that teachers should aim to disrupt students’ negative perceptions of the LGBTQ+ community, the court found that the curricula would “impose upon children a set of values and beliefs that are ‘hostile’ to their parents’ religious beliefs.”
A. Legal impacts of Mahmoud
On its face, it is possible that Mahmoud could remain limited to a certain set of circumstances — those where educators are directed to impart some normative value judgment on students that conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs. Under this view, Mahmoud stands for the protection of parents’ rights to resist compulsion, rather than an attack on LGBTQ+ rights. However, the court extends its holding not only to the normative lessons, but to books themselves, where such texts contain LGBTQ+ themes. Because the books at issue in Mahmoud were “clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected,” the court argued that they pose a very real threat to religious families whose values do not align with what is taught in class. However, almost any children’s book will contain some sort of normative values statement, so what is the limiting factor? In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warns that the majority grants parents the power to object to “exposure by another name.” By shifting the standard of a violation of the hybrid right from a compulsory disruption of a religious community’s way of life to something that merely communicates a value judgment at odds with one’s beliefs, Mahmoud endangers the entire line of cases built on Yoder. Already, the Supreme Court vacated a decision from the Second Circuit denying religious parents’ challenge to New York’s mandatory school vaccine law and required the circuit court to reconsider their decision in the wake of Mahmoud.
Without meaningful limiting principles, the legal standard set by Mahmoud is vulnerable to manipulation and politicization. For example, as the political right continues to attack the LGBTQ+ community from all sides, such actors could use the decision to argue that any sort of discussion of gender and sexuality that is at odds with conservative Christian values violates parents’ free speech rights. Even if educators go to great lengths to present LGBTQ+ inclusive materials neutrally, “it is exactly the . . . tolerance furthered by the curriculum to which the parents [may object].” Any mention of the LGBTQ+ community in classrooms, whether it be a student discussing their family or a teacher discouraging bullying targeting LGBTQ+ individuals, could spur parental objections.
B. Practical effects
The expansiveness of the court’s decision challenges the substance and administration of inclusive education. Although parents who opt their children out of lessons that run contrary to their religious beliefs might have valid reasons for doing so, states and schools still possess meaningful interests in fostering social integration and cultural exposure. By opting students out of such education, parents deprive their children of the opportunity to learn about the inherent multiculturalism of American society. Furthermore, the act of removing a child from a classroom stigmatizes the subject matter for other students, who might perceive a negativity or wrongness in learning about the LGBTQ+ community when their peers leave the room for specific lessons.
Additionally, schools will struggle with the logistics of handling the influx of opt-out demands as a result of Mahmoud. When a student opts out, the school must reallocate resources to provide substitute supervision and lessons for that child. Given the high administrative burdens of managing these demands, it is quite possible that schools will simply dispose of their inclusive curricula in an attempt to sidestep the logistical nightmare of managing opt-outs.
Given these risks, advocacy groups have sought to emphasize several strategies to help educators maintain their commitments to inclusive education. Schools can formalize their opt-out policy through school district administration, rather than requiring teachers to engage in one-on one conversations about individual objections. This strategy reduces individual liability for teachers who still wish to provide inclusive education to students while also strengthening the school district’s control over local policies and administration. Additionally, schools and educators can avoid jettisoning their inclusive curricula by engaging in coalition-building to find community allies who may counter the voices of dissenters who object to inclusive education. Despite the complexity of the post-Mahmoud legal landscape, the requirement to let students opt out does not preclude teachers from discussing controversial subjects, so long as the educators are well-protected. In sum, though schools must remain aware of the risks posed by this precedent, they can continue to support inclusive educational values through careful adherence to procedure and community engagement.
Conclusion
Mahmoud v. Taylor signified a marked departure from precedent that balanced parents’ rights with schools’ ability to direct curricula development. As a result, the rights of children to be exposed to ideas, as well as the ability of teachers to communicate freely with their students, are endangered. By engaging with the community of parents, students and teachers committed to diversity in education, educators can comply with this new precedent while promoting pluralistic values.
Ashni is a third-year student at New York University School of Law with a passion for civil rights and constitutional law. While in law school, Ashni has interned at Investor Advocates for Social Justice and the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Education Policy Center.
